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SERMONS 

)R THE PRINCIPAL FESTIVALS AND FASTS 
OF THE CHURCH YEAR 



BY THE 

RT. REV. PHILLIPS BROOKS, D. D. 

Late Bishop of the Diocese of Massachusetts 
EDITED BY THE 

REV. JOHN COTTON BROOKS 



Seventb Series 



NEW YORK 
E. P. BUTTON & COMPANY 

31 West Twenty-third Street 
1 90 1 



^<i^o. 



Copyright, 1895, 
By E. p. button & COMPANY. 



TO THE MEMORY OF MY BROTHER, 

ARTHUR BROOKS, 

MY COMPANION IN BOYHOOD AND IN MANHOOD, 

I DEDICATE, 

IN LOVING REMEMBRANCE AND PATIENT HOPE, THESE 

SERMONS OF HIM WITH WHOM NOW HE WALKS 

IN THE LIGHT OF THE GLORIFIED CHRIST, 

WHOSE THEY ARE AND WHOM THEY SERVE. 

J. C. B. 

OCTOBER, 
1895. 



OONTEKTS. 



I* PAGE 

First Sunday in Advent 1 

" Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the 
knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, imto 
the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ." — 
Eph. IV. 13. 

II. 

Second Sunday in Advent 18 

" He came unto His own, and His own received Him 
not. But as many as received Him, to them gave He 
power to become the sons of God." — John i. 11, 12. 

m. 

Third Sunday in Advent 35 

"He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness 
of that Light."— John i. 8. 

IV. 

Fourth Sunday in Advent 54 

" But when the fullness of the time was come, God 
sent forth His Son." — Gal. iv. 4. 

V. 

Christmas Eve 72 

"Because there was no room for them in the inn." — 
Luke ii. 7. 

■V 



VI CONTENTS. 

VI. PAGE 

Christmas Day 85 

"And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us." 
— John i. 14. 

VII. 

Sunday after Christmas 97 

"And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the 
Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.'' 
— Gal. IV. 6. 

VIII. 
Ash Wednesday 110 

" Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and 
"whose sins are covered.'' — Eom. iv. 7. 

IX. 

First Sunday in Lent 130 

" Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilder- 
ness to be tempted of the devil." — Matt. iv. 1. 

X. 

Second Sunday in Lent 150 

" It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but 
by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." 
— ^Matt. IV. 4. 

XI. 

Third Sunday in Lent 167 

"Again, the devil taketh Him up into an exceeding 
high, mountain, and showeth Him all the kingdoms of 
the world, and the glory of them." — Matt. iv. 8. 

XII. 

Fourth Sunday in Lent 184 

"And David said unto Nathan, I have sinned against 
the Lord. And Nathan said unto David, The Lord also 
hath put away thy sin ; thou shalt not die. " — 2 Sam. xii. 13. 



CONTENTS. VU 

Xni. PAGE 

Fifth Sunday in Lent 196 

''Ye are they whicli have continued with Me in My 
temptations. And I appoint unto you a kingdom, as My 
Father hath appointed unto Me." — Luke xxii. 28, 29. 

XIV. 

The Sunday next before Easter 209 

" And they that went before, and they that followed, 
cried, saying, Hosanna ; Blessed is He that cometh in 
the name of the Lord." — ]\L?lRK xi. 9. 

XV. 
Passion Week 222 

"Now is My soul troubled; and what shall I say? 
Father, save Me from this hour. But for this cause came 
I unto this hour. Father, glorify Thy name." — John 
XII. 27, 28. 

XVI. 
Thursday before Easter 239 

''And He cometh, and findeth them sleeping, and saith 
unto Peter, Simon, sleepest thou? couldest not thou 
watch one hour?" — jMark xiv. 37. 

xvn. 

Good Friday 255 

" And I, if I be lifted up, . . . will draw all men unto 
Me."— John xii. 32, 

xvm. 

Easter Day 269 

"That I may know Him, and the power of His resur- 
rection." — Phil. hi. 10. 



Vni CONTENTS. 

XIX. PAGE 

Ascension Day 286 

"And a cloud received Him out of their sight." — Acts 
I. 9. 

" Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught 
up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord 
in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord." — 1 
Thess. IV. 17. 

XX. 
Whitsunday 303 

"The communion of the Holy Ghost." — 2 Cor. xiii. 
14. 

XXI. 
Trinity Sunday 318 

''Again, He sent other servants more than the first. 
. . . But last of all He sent unto them His Son." — Matt. 
XXI. 36, 37. 

XXII. 

The Transfiguration of Christ 336 

"And Peter answered and said to Jesus, Master, it is 
good for us to be here : and let us make three taber- 
nacles ; one for Thee, and one for Moses, and one for 
Elias. For he wist not what to say."— Mark ix. 5, 6. 



FIRST SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 

" Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge 
of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the 
stature of the fullness of Christ." — Eph. iv. 13. 

If any entire stranger were to come to-day into our 
service and watch it as it moves along from step to 
step, one thing would become evident to him in it all. 
He would see that we were beginning something. Every- 
thmg, apparently, is starting fresh. And if he looked 
along the services of the other Sundays that are to 
follow this he would see that it is a whole long year 
that we are commencing. A course that runs on 
through the next twelve months opens to-day. On 
through the deepening winter, on through the open- 
ing spring, on into the far-off warmth of next summer, 
until another autumn closes on us, is to run the course 
of services beginning on this Advent Sunday. It is the 
Church's New-Year's Day. And one thing more would 
strike him if he were observant. He would see that 
all this year is filled and shaped by the life of a Person. 
One man's biography sweeps through it all, and every 
season is colored with the aspect in which it finds the 
great pervading hfe of Jesus Christ. Men's fortunes 
and employments will change as they always do. Sue- 



Z FIRST SUNDAY IN AD^^NT. 

cess and failure, health and sickness, life and death, 
will come with all the changing months around to next 
December; "but through them all, as if it were some- 
thing that la}' deeper than their changes, as if it were 
the presence in which and even the power by which 
all men failed or succeeded, lived or died, will run the 
stor^r of Him who was born in Bethlehem and ascended 
into heaven from the Mount of Olives. And the ob- 
servant stranger who saw this would have thus found 
the central truth of Christianity. He would have seen 
represented that presence and power which all Chris- 
tian life, whether of church or soul, is always trjdng to 
realize — the presence and power of the Incarnation ; the 
ti'uth that all of human life is lived in the presence of, 
is represented by, and may be filled with and inspired 
by the life of the great Son of Man, who in a hundred 
senses lived for all men ; in whose experiences all human 
experiences ought to find their key and their solution ; 
who became completely what we are that we might 
come in everything to be like Him. 

Christ was both the Redeemer and the Type of hu- 
man life, the Saviour and the Pattern of men at once. 
We too much separate His two great offices, which 
really are not distinguishable. He could not have been 
our Saviour without being our Pattern ; and even in 
the most mysterious functions of this Sa^dourhood 
there is always something in which we can pattern 
ourselves by Him. It foUows, then, that all this life 
whose story we begin to-day is not merely a remote in- 
imitable transaction wrought for every man's salvation, 
but is also the type of everj^ man's existence. It is the 
great representative existence. All that happened to 



FIRST Sl"rNDAY IN ADVENT. 3 

Christ's humanity belongs to the perfect ideal picture 
of every human life. As we stand, then, upon the 
height of Advent Sunday and look along the stages 
of the life of Jesus which the Church will one by one 
commemorate, we are really looking along the history 
of universal human life, and so the possible, the perfect 
life of every man. Each stage was perfect in its devel- 
opment in Him, but each stage, however imperfectly 
lived, belongs to all men. The Christian year be- 
comes, then, in one very true view of it, the pictui'e of 
a human life from its fii'st suggested promise to its 
latest effective influence upon the earth. Let me lead 
you to this thought and its developments. Let us 
see how each season of the Church's year presents a 
true period in and experience of every truly human 
life, represented by and worked out in the pattern of 
the humaiU life of Jesus. I hope that such a study may 
do something to bring the perfect divine and human 
life of Christ closer to these lives of ours ; for that is 
what all our worship and preaching are for ; that is the 
greatest happiness and blessing that can come to any 
man. 

The Church's year begins with Christ's advent ; then 
comes His epiphany, then His suffering and death, and 
then the giving of His Spirit. Through all of these we 
shall pass in these next few months. 

L Take first the advent. It was not suddenly and 
unannounced that Jesus came into the world. He 
came into a world that had been prepared for Him. 
The whole Old Testament is the story of a special prep- 
aration. The key to Jewish history is the anticipation 
of His coming. And we have not begun to understand 



4 FIRST SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 

the vastiiess of His mission unless we know that not 
merely the education of Judea, but the education of 
the whole world, was and is aimed at the preparation 
for the time when Jesus Christ should come to be its 
Master. You go into some heathen island now and 
preach Christ, and every readiness of nature to appre- 
ciate and take Him, which has been wrought out by all 
their religious struggles, is but another sign and illus- 
tration of how God prepares the advent of His Son. 
And then inside of the Judean history we have the 
special preparation — the story which we read this 
morning, the mission and ministry of John the Baptist. 
Ouly when all was ready, only in the fullness of His 
time, did Jesus come. 

And now what shall we say about the lives of other 
men — the men of whom He was the representative and 
the chief ? Have they their advents too ? It is easy to be- 
lieve it about the greatest of them. It is easy to think 
that those who have gathered the richness of the world 
into themselves and turned its currents of action or 
thought — easy to think of Moses, Charlemagne, Luther, 
Bacon, Shakespeare — that God prepared the world 
against their coming and sent them when the world was 
ready. The ages seem to make their advents. But it is 
hard to think the same of common people such as you and 
I. It seems as if our lives might have been dropped any- 
where — three thousand years ago as weU as now, and on 
the banks of the Nile as well as on the shores of Massa- 
chusetts Bay. Hard as it is, great as the strain which 
it puts on a,U our low habits of thinking about our- 
selves, the Bible is a strong and glorious call to men to 
gird up the loins of their minds and believe that God 



FIRST SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 5 

had a place for them and put them in their own phxce. 
It has these two truths, which it insists upon every- 
where : that God cares separately for every man, and 
that every man has his own individual personal char- 
acter. Personal di\'ine care and personal human char- 
acter — these two ideas are bright in all the Bible ; in 
both the Testaments, in David and in Paul alike. Take 
those two truths together and they would blend in the 
conviction that God surely could not send His souls at 
random into the world, but for each a place must be 
hollowed in the plain of time and filled with all that 
could bring that soul to its best completeness. And 
this conviction, gathered out of the Bible's whole treat- 
ment of humanity, is set forth with representative 
clearness in the story of the advent of the Son of Man. 

This, then, is the beginning of a life. It goes back 
before the moment when the man is here, a visible fact 
upon the earth. It laj^s hold of the thought of God 
which runs back into eternity. God knew your nature. 
He had a plan and pattern of your being in His mind. 
As David says, His eyes did see your substance, yet 
being imperfect, and in His book were all your mem- 
bers A\TL'itten. Knowing you, He made ready a place 
for you, He shaped a cradle for jou in the ages, and 
when it was all done He laid your new life in it — the 
advent before the nativity. 

What influence shall it have upon a man for him to 
know all this about his life — to know that it was contem- 
plated and the world made ready for it before he was 
born 1 Shall it not give him, first, a deep reverence for 
Ms own life f Shall it not shake him free from that moral 
laziness which cloaks itself in the disguise of modesty, 



6 FIRST SITNDAY IN ADVENT. 

and make him accept the responsibilities and duties of 
a being for whom God has made the earth and the ages 
ready? 

And shall it not make him docile, teaching him to look 
not to his own self-will, but to the God who chose his 
place for him, to know what, living in just that place, he 
ought to be "/ Responsibility and docility — these qual- 
ities of which the life of Jesus was so full — must fill the 
life of every man who believes in his own advent. 

2. After the advent comes the natkity. The prom- 
ised Christ is born. We can see what that meant in 
the history of Jesus. No longer prophesied and an- 
ticipated, at last the great typal life was a real fact in 
the world — a visible fact with all its possibilities con- 
tained within it. It was, indeed, but a poor helpless 
child at Bethlehem, but in its being there was really 
wrapped up all that that child was to grow to and to 
be and do. No wonder that Christmas Day has been so 
sacred to all those who believed in Jesus Christ ; for it 
has seemed to sum up in itself every association and 
meaning of His life. Birth, the second fact in existence, 
the actual appearing of a being planned in the thought 
of God, had first in Christ this deep and comprehensive 
value, but it has kept that same value always. 

Carry it over now to other men. Why is it that we 
celebrate the birthdays of great men ? Is it not because 
all that they were and did seems to be gathered up into 
th at critical moment when their life first was present as 
a true, real fact among the lives of men ? And remember, 
here, just as before, cur distinctions between great men 
and common men are mostly arbitrary and accidental. 
We are all so little and all so great in God's sight. So that 



FIRST SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 7 

the birth of any man, the beginning of any new life, is a 
great and solemn thing. How hard it is sometimes to 
make it seem so to ourselves ! With all this swarm of 
men about us, how in our lower moments we wonder, 
after all, whether it is more than the buzzing of a little 
wisei* bees about their hive, or the clustering of a little 
bigger ants around their ant-hill ! What matter whether 
there be one more or less? What matter whether one 
be taken away or one added to the uncounted number f 
What matter death or birth ? That is the low way of 
looking at it all. The higher way, catching the spii'it 
of the Lord's nativity, when the angek sang in heaven 
because a Man was born, and the very stars were con- 
scious of His coming, sees the true dignity, the almost 
awful solemnity of a human birth. It wonders whether 
there is anything in the universe more critical and 
sacred than for a new human life to begin here on the 
earth. These other worlds about us may have the same 
mysterious, infinite event. In them, too, spiritual be- 
ings — beings with chai^cters like men and women — 
may be born, and then there is in them the same so- 
lemnity that there is here. But if not — if they have no 
life of character, nothing corresponding to our person- 
ality — then no splendor or exquisiteness of physical 
life that they may have to boast can make them for a 
moment rivals in dignity and interest of this little 
planet that swims in their midst. For here men are 
born. Each from the moment of his birth has his own 
singleness and unity. Each may be saved or lost. 
Each may do right or wrong. Each may be like Grod 
or like Satan. Each has a capacity of happiness or 
miser}^ as yet unfathomed. Each may become glorious 



8 FIRST SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 

or horrible — giorious with a spiiitiial hister that no 
phj^sical brilhance of any brightest star can compare 
with, or horrible with a tragical destruction that no 
burned and blasted planet can begin to match. All this 
is wrapped np in ever}^ man's birth, his whole power of 
separate existence ; and so every man who really knows 
the sacredness of his own birth, who has learned from 
the wonders that surrounded the entrance of God into 
onr flesh what a wonderful thing it is for any man to 
begin to live in the life which the Incarnation illumi- 
nated, mnst go through life strong and alert, with a 
clear sense of his own personality, never losing himself 
in the mass and crowd^ keeping his independence, think- 
ing- his own thoughts, and feeling his own feehngs — 
hdng' et mmiy as he never loses sight of his birth, the time 
w^hen he hegan to be a man. 

3. After Advent and Christmas in the Church's year 
comes the Epipliamj, which celebrates the manifestation 
of Christ to those entirely outside of His own life and 
all its first associations. The world made ready for 
Him and His birth complete, now He must show His in- 
fluence upon the world. The purpose of His coming 
must be seen, that men may be something different be- 
eanse He is here ) may be drawn away from themselves 
to Him. I want yon to see how this new stage in 
Christ's life represents the next stage in the fullest and 
highest life of man ; for it is most important, and it is 
so easily forgotten and neglected. A man's place is 
made ready for him in the mind of God ; the man's life 
is set here as a positive, clear fact ; and what comes 
next ? There is no donbt what ought to come. That 
life must tell. It must go out beyond itself. It must 



FIRST SUNDAY IN ADVENT. V 

have influence. It must testify and supplement the 
mere fact of its existence by making other existences 
be something which they wonld not be without it. This 
seems so plain. This is so clearly set forth in the great 
typical life of Jesus. Can you conceive of an incarna- 
tion in w^hich it should not have been prominent 'I Can 
you picture to yourself God coming into this world 
and then living a perfectly self-contained life — one 
that recognized no relations with and exercised no 
power over other lives about Him ? No ! The epiph- 
any followed immediately on the advent and the nativity. 
Not by an effort ; it was the next natural and necessary 
stage. It was a true epiphany. He merely showed 
Himself. He let His life go forth on other lives. He 
let His great light shine before men. But how many 
there are who realize their advent and their nativity 
who have never conceived for themselves of an epiph- 
any ! There are so many men who believe in their 
own place in the world, and are conscious of their own 
personal nature with its capacities and needs, who 
never have gone any further — nei^'er have dreamed 
that they were put here where iliQj are, and made to be 
ivliat they are, in order that other men might be some- 
thing else through them. This is one of the heresies 
of life which men are not ashamed to own. They put 
it into philosophic shapes. There are theories of self- 
culture which are printed in books, taught in our 
schools, given as very gospels to our children as they 
grow up, which would be just exactly the same that 
they are now if no such dream as a possible duty of 
usefulness and influence from that child to other peo- 
ple had ever entered into the thought of God or man. 



10 FIRST SrXDAY IX ADVENT. 

Hear what a child is taught. Is not this mostly what 
is said to him ? '' You are born into this rich and gor- 
geous nineteenth century. You are the ' heir of all the 
ages.' All the thought, discovery, invention, progress 
of the centuries have been fitting this world for your 
coming. And now, when the world is all ready, here 
you are." That is the lesson of his advent. And then 
he is told: ^^You are born into this world; you, a sep- 
arate, distinct, new being ; you, with a personal life ; 
yoii who are and can be something that no other being 
in the world can be." That is the lesson of his nativity. 
He takes them both, and the result of both as they 
sink into his soul is a conviction and a resolution full 
of selfishness : " I will study, I will work and think, I 
will claim my place here — all that I may be myself com- 
pletely, that I may cultivate myself." It rings through 
all our books and colleges, through all our homes and 
stores, this gospel of seK-culture. '^ Be strong, be rich, 
be wise, be good." What for? ^'Wh}^, so that you 
may be wise and rich and strong and good." The end- 
less circle with its bright monotonous round. ISTo won- 
der that so man}^ young men are asking in the bottom 
of their hearts questions of most terrible skepticism : 
^'What is the use? Is it worth while to be Tvdse and 
strong and rich and good ? " Ah, you must find the use 
outside yourself. You must let your light shine hefore 
men, that they may see your good works, and glorify 
your Father which is in heaven. You must complete 
your advent and nativity with an epiphany of yourself. 
Then it will seem well worth while to light your human 
light most brilliantly a.nd keep it trimmed most vigi- 
lantly. Do you ask me how ? Do you not see that it 



FIRST Sl'^'DAY IN ADVENT. 11 

is impossible for any one to tell you ? The snn or the 
street lamp might as well ask lioiv to light the passen- 
ger. Only shine toward your brethren's lives, onl}^ be 
your best in their direction. It must be a true epiph- 
any, a real showing of yourself to other men. As dif- 
ferent and characteristic as yourself is will be tlie light 
you give them. Perhaps you will illustrate for them 
some truth, perhaps you will inspire them with some 
hope, p(^rhaps you will teach them how to do their work. 
The methods will decree themseh'es if only you, like 
Christ, are what you are, not for yourself, but for your 
fellow-men ; if only, like Him, you have not only an ad- 
vent and a nativity, but an epiphany. Put these two 
texts together, for they belong together; the same 
Clu'ist spoke them : '• The Son of Man came not to be 
ministered unto, but to minister, and give his life a 
ransom for man}^ ; " and "As Thou hast sent Me into the 
world, even so have I also sent them into the world." 

4. But we must pass on. After the Advent, the 
Nativity, and the Epiphany in the Church's year comes 
Lent, with its preparation for and culmination in Good 
Friday, opening suddenly into the glorious light of 
Easter Day. What does this mean ? The life of Jesus, pre- 
pared for before His birth, introduced into the world at 
Bethlehem, then brought into contact with and influence 
upon the lives of men, finally completes itself in suffer- 
ing. Remember we are speaking now about Christ's 
life and death, not with reference to the mysterious 
redemptive efficacy that was in it, but as the great 
human life, the representative life that set forth the 
ideal experience and cultui^e of a human soul. And 
surelv it does not fail us here. Wliatever else comes 



12 FIRST SUNDAY IX ADVENT. 

to a life, there is a final grace and greatness whicli it 
cannot have until it has been touched by pain. I do 
not speak it sentimentally. I do not mean the jnere 
pathetic romance which gives a charm to the story of 
the unfortunate. I mean the very stuff and qualities 
of our manhood — those things v/hich make us really 
and complete^ men. The}^ are not brought out in 
their manliest vigOr until we have suffered. Often the 
suffering is of a kind men do not see. Physical pain, 
the sickness which makes one tremble as he walks, and 
takes the color from the cheek, is the most evident, but 
it is the smallest kind of suffering. But whenever you 
have seen a man leaving his crudity and childishness 
behind him and really gromng mature, however men 
may say carelessly, ^^ Oh, lie has never known what it is 
to suffer," you may know better. That maturity of 
character is as sure a sign of some healthy experience 
of pain, however secret, as the brilliancy and clearness 
of a bit of glass is of the fire through which it has 
passed. The qualities whicli nothing but hard contact 
with suffering can make are not mere pleasing graces ; 
they are the completing qualities of manhood, tlie very 
stuff and fiber of a man — self-knowledge, humility, pa- 
tience, sympathy, and a constant consciousness of God. 
Can you have a complete man without these, and can 
you have these unless in some way the man has suffered ? 
This is the reason why it is so universal. You think 
you know exceptions. But, my dear friend, what do 
you know about it ? The men you call exceptions per- 
haps have been the very deepest in the sea of pain. 
You are pouring out your s^^mpathy on some complain- 
ing grumbler who has lost a little money, and thinking 



FIRST SrXDAY IX ADVENT. 13 

how painless is the life of a brave man who refnses to 
g-rnmble, bnt whose dearest hopes have been broken 
into fragments, and the ideals which were his very life 
all disappointed. Yon do not wrong him by denying 
him yonr petty sympathy, bnt you do wrong yourself 
in making too much of the little trouble and failing to 
see with what a great manly education of sorroAv God 
is training all His children. 

"It became Him, for whom are all things, and 
by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto 
glory, to make the Captain of theii* salvation perfect 
through sufferings." When the vase is all shaped into 
its strong, beautiful form, when the artist's hand has 
lavished its best skill upon it, then it is quietly laid 
into the hot oven. B}^ and by it comes out with its 
lines fii-m and bright, its sm-face clear and brilliant, its 
colors fixed forever. There is a glory after the pain, 
an Easter after the Lent ; but no glory ivithout the pain, 
no Easter without the Lent of character. And who 
are we that w^e should grow angry or miserable when 
we see that great universal treatment by Avhich alone 
the Son of Man was made perfect, b}^ which alone any 
son of man ever can be made perfect, drawing near to 
us or to any one we love among our fellow-men? 

5. After the Lent and Easter comes one stage more 
— that which is represented by WJdtsuJiday, the day of 
the giving of the Holy Spirit. You remember what 
Jesus said about the Holy Ghost : "He shall take of 
Mine, and shall show it unto j'ou." It was to be the 
perpetuated work of Christ. After the suffering and 
death were over, and He was seen no more upon the 
earth, then His power was really to have but just begun. 



14 FIRST SUNDAY IX ADVENT. 

It should go out and touch men wider and deeper than 
He had ever done when He was present on the earth. 
The epi]3hany was the influence of the visible Christ j the 
Whitsunday is the influence of the invisible, ascended 
Christ. Would you call any man's life a great life, even 
a true life, whose influence stopped the moment his 
personal, seen presence was removed f It seems to me 
as if there were hardly any surer test of the realit}' or 
unreality, the depth or superficialness of human power. 
One man seems strong. Here in our community it ap- 
pears as if he were deciding what men should do or be, 
which way events should turn. Some day we read in 
the papers that that man is dead, and from that mo- 
ment on his power is all gone. It is as if he had never 
lived. It is as if some hand had with a single touch 
shifted the machinery so that not the smallest or most 
insignificant wheel thereafter owned his influence. 
^'None so poor to do him reverence." Another man 
dies, and it is as if death were the revelation of his 
force and the beginning of his influence. Men did not 
know how they loved him till he was taken away. 
Men did not see the stores of motive and impidse that 
were in his character till the shell of circumstances was 
broken through. In his own circle, in the city where 
he lives, it seems as if he were more powerful when he 
is seen no more upon the streets than when men met 
him every day. There has been, as it were, a descent 
of his spirit, a Pentecost of his departed preseiice. Oh, 
there are households among you where some son or 
daughter who is dead is stronger in the shaping of the 
daily life than any of the men and women who are stiU 
alive. His character is at once a standard and an in- 



FIRST SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 15 

spiration. You do what would please him more scru- 
pulously than when he was alive. He conquers your 
sluggishness and corrects your wilfulness and refines 
your coarseness every day. To say that he is not with 
yon is to make companionship altogether a physical, 
not at all a spiritual thing. To say that he is al^sent 
from you, and that the neighbor of whom you know 
nothing, for w^hom you care nothing, and who cares 
nothing for you, is present with you, is to confuse ail 
thoughts of neighborhood, to put the false for the true, 
the superficial for the deep. 

This is the difference of men — those whose power 
stops with their death, and those whose power really 
opens into its true richness when they die. The first 
sort of men have mechanical power. The second sort 
of men have spiritual power. And the final test and 
witness of spiritual force is seen in the ability to cast 
the bodily life away and yet continue to give help and 
courage and wisdom to those who see us no longer; 
to be, like Christ, the helper of men's souls even from 
beyond the grave. 

I must stop here. After Whitsunday in the Church's 
year there come certain Sundays not nominally but 
really connected with the life of Christ — Trinity Sun- 
day and those that follow it. They represent, I think, 
the way in which a great life opens into all the various 
lessons of absolute truth and fills mth its influence 
every field of duty, till it is absolutely world-wide in its 



Thus I have traced along the Christian year the his- 
tory that runs through it. It sets up the great human 



16 FIRST SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 

life. The building of the perfect man is the noblest 
work that can go on in the world. The seasons come 
and go, the harvests ripen and are gathered in, the 
mountains are built up and decay; but all these are 
sights that cannot match in digiiity and interest the 
spectacle of a full, strong man's life. First God pre-^ 
pares for him the place where he is to live. Then his 
life comes and takes its place, a strong and settled fact. 
Then it puts forth its power and influences other men. 
Then suffering comes to it and matures it, but finally 
it issues out of suffering, refined and triumphant. And 
at last, when it has passed away out of the world into 
new regions of activity and growth, it leaves its power 
behind it to bless men after it is dead. There is noth- 
ing so round and perfect as such a life in all the world. 
It is the very crown of God's creation. 

Such a complete life is pictured in the Church's jesir. 
It has its Advent, Nativity, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Whit- 
sunday, Trinity Sunday . It fills the year with its increas- 
ing, slowl^^ maturing beauty. This is the true meaning 
of the year, with all its sacred seasons. Let us be true 
Churchmen and give it all its richness. Only, dear 
friends, we do not really honor the venerable beauty of 
the Church's calendar when we make it a badge of our 
denominational distinction, or deck its seasons out 
with all the trickery of colored altar-cloths, purple and 
white and green, but when we see in it the story of a 
human life slowly ripened from God's first purpose to 
the full-grow^n, glorified manhood standing before God's 
presence and sending forth God's poAver to its fellow- 
men. 

We do not dishonor the humanity of Jesus when we 



FIRST SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 17 

thus make it the type of what ours may be. He wanted 
and He loves to have us use it so. " As I am, so are ye 
in this work!/' He declared. Only remember He is not 
only pattern, but power. We must be like Him, but 
we cannot be, save as He makes us. We must come to 
Him, but we can only come to Him by His grace and 
help. 

Standing at the beginning of the Christian year, 
remembering how He came to redeem us all unto 
Himself, let us pray for ourselves and one another 
that the perfect manhood which we see stretching down 
that 3^ear may be complete in each of us ; that we may 
be led as our Lord was led through every stage of 
growth, till we too enter into the glory of God and 
leave the spirit of our life behind ns to be a live bless- 
ing to onr brethren when we are what they call dead. 
This be our Advent prayer. 



II. 

SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 

" He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. But 
as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the 
sons of God." — John i. 11, 12. 

Who was it that came ? Who was it whose coining 
is thus described ? Everybody knows who, as child or 
man, has read the first chapter of St, John, in which 
these words occur. It was the "Word," which "was 
made flesh, and dwelt among ns." It was the Word 
which was "with God in the beginning," and which 
" was God." It was Jesus Christ. The words, then, take ^ 
us instantly into connection with an event with which 
no other can compare. Whatever our growing wis- 
dom learns that is marvelons about the past history of 
our planet, of the tremendous forces that have been 
at work upon its structure, and the strange, splendid 
deeds that men have done upon its surface, this one 
event in its long life — that God came here, that divine 
feet trod upon its ground, and a divine voice spoke 
with its breath — must forever stand out bright and 
high above everything. Just as in an old nobleman's 
X)ala.ce, where all kinds of life have flowed along for 
centuries, where men and women have lived and loved 
and worked, been born, married, and died, where splen- 

18 



SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 19 

did deeds have been done and splendid lives been lived, 
there still shines out above all others one day, centuries 
ag'o, when a king was its guest, so in the w^orld's history 
there can be no time to compare with that in which 
Divinity came here. The whole world that knows about 
the coming dates its whole life from it. Such is the 
splendor and importance of the advent of Jesus Clirist. 

In speaking of Christ's advent to-day I should 
like to be led by the verse of St. John which I have 
quoted : " He came unto His own, and His own received 
Him not. But as many as received Him, to them gave 
He power to become the sons of Grod." And it will lead 
me to speak first of the fact^ then of the purpose, and 
then of the result of the Incarnation. What is there 
that a man can speak to men about that can come to 
and take hold of the soul of him who speaks and them 
who hear like the story of God manifest in a human 
flesh and life like ours ? I bespeak your attention and 
interest. 

1. First, then, w^e speak of the fact of the advent. 
God came to man. "What do we mean by that? Evi- 
dently, I answer first, something separate and peculiar ; 
evidently something definite and different from anj^- 
thing that there had been in the world before. We 
mean some preeminent and distinctive coming. For 
God had not been absent or foreign before. He had 
labored in every way to make men know that He was 
with them. And He had come to them with clear and 
certain exhibitions of Himself. Always, at the very 
outset let us say, when we speak of God's coming to 
man it is not in any sense which implies that He had 
not been with them always. It is a coming, not of ap- 



20 SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 

2)roacli, but of manifestation; not such an approacli as 
the sun makes when it rolls up in the morning from 
the under- world, but such as it makes when it scatters 
the cloud and shows us where its glory shines. And 
even in this sense of manifestation God had come to 
men before. Some people ask about the Incarnation. 
What does it mean f You say it was God speaking to 
man. Had not God always been speakmg to man? 
Are there not two eternal voices which have never been 
silent for an instant — the voice of God in His works 
and the voice of God in the soul of man ? Many peo- 
ple, I believe, pecuharly ahve to these great voices of 
God, hearing them all the time, listening to them al- 
ways, think it strange when the Incarnation of Jesus is 
set forth as the utterance of God to man. It seems to 
them almost to dishonor and insult those rich and con- 
stant messages which they have always been receiving 
from the works around that told them of the Maker, 
and the child-heart within that told them of the Father. 
These messages of God we want to assert most strongly. 
They are very real. We cannot listen to them too de- 
voutly. But it does seem to me that very often just 
the man who listens most devoutly to these messages 
is the man who comes to feel the need of another mes- 
sage out beyond these, the man who sighs and cries for 
something more. You are impressed with the truth 
that all the world is an utterance of the Almighty. Its 
countless beauties, its exquisite adaptations, aU speak 
to you of him. You sit and listen, and it seems, now 
that these lips have been opened and all the universe 
is vocal, as if there were nothing left between you and 
God to desire. Listen and listen on and vou will learn 



SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 21 

everything. But by and b}^ you certainly come to an 
end of that utterance. By and by you have reached 
the limit beyond which you are sure that there is some- 
thing which sky and land and ocean cannot tell. The 
message is imperfect. It gives you glimpses of Pur- 
2)ose, Wisdom, even Benevolence, and a profound impres- 
sion of Poiver, but all is inarticulate and stops far short 
of perfect knowledge of the Person of the God who 
speaks. And then you seem to discover another fuller 
voice of God. He speaks to you through great men. 
Prophets and sages and saints are His utterances. Their 
lives transmit His being. That is a vast discovery. It 
opens the ear and sets the heart to quicker beating. 
" Now," you say, " I shall know God." But there, too, 
comes disappointment. No great man is cpiite great 
enough. No good man is quite good enough. Each 
mixes himself with the message that he brings. His 
own partialness and imperfectness is in it. You have 
not fully heard God yet. And then comes one hope 
more. Disappointed outside yourself, you are sitting 
despondent, perhaps, when suddenly the voice begins to 
speak tvithin you. Here it is right in your heart. What 
is true, what is good, is being uttered from the oracle 
within. A solemn awe and a deep delight in himself 
come to the man who hears that voice. Woiv let the 
world be as disturbed and disappointing as it may, how 
can it harm him ? He carries the voice vdth him. It 
is the clearer the more solitary he is. At last God cer- 
tainly has come. Alas ! I need not tell you of that dis- 
appointment. You have not come to doubt the voice 
of God wdthin you — God forbid that you ever should. 
But you have learned that your own inner self is full 



22 SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 

of confusions and contradictions. You have been 
deceived. You have taken your own passions for the 
voice of God until you are afraid to trust implicitly 
even that conscience which you reverence. You know 
yourself too well to think that through that self the 
highest and richest voice of God can utter itself to you. 
And what then ? Listening to all these voices, we have 
not yet heard all that God has to say. Opening all 
these doors, it has not wholl}^ come to us. The soul, as I 
said, that has most tried and so most known the in- 
sufficiency of all these other ministries is the readiest 
to welcome the new mercy as just that which it needs, 
when at last there is another coming, an objective and 
historic fact, something recognizable and clear, the 
visible appearance of Divinity itself, so that those who 
had seen God's works and heard some of His words and 
felt some of His movements now saw Sim not merely 
speaking to humanity, but present in humanity— God 
manifest in the flesh. 

I think that we can understand how the Incarnation 
was something new and different in the relationship of 
God and man if we think about our own relations to 
our friends. My absent friend comes to me every day 
in very true, important senses. The works that he has 
done are all around me. I see his hand in every arrange- 
ment for my comfort which his care and money have 
provided. That is one coming. And every day when 
the door opens and some mutual friend comes in, some 
one who knows him and loves him and has caught his 
character, it is as if my absent friend himself stepped 
across the threshold. That is another coming. And 
yet again, when I look into my own heart and find my 



SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 23 

friend there, when he speaks to me in tastes that he has 
cultivated and standards that I have learned from him, 
when he speaks to me out of my o^vn self filled with 
him b}' love, there is another coming. But with all 
these still he is dim to me ; I cannot feel him, I cannot 
find him. But some day, as I sit there trying to appre- 
hend him, the door opens and lie limiself comes in — 
with the face I know, with the smile I love, with the 
step that always made my heart beat. There he is him- 
self ; now he has really come. Not that the old com- 
ings do not help me still ; not that I do not see new 
meaning in his face because of all the study I have 
given to his works and all the hours I have talked with 
my own heart about him, trying to find him there ; but 
here he is himself — no longer through a glass darkly, 
but now face to face. Now if the Incarnation is really 
as separate and new a method of knowledge as that, 
then it is not strange that it should stand out so in his- 
tor3\ " He sent unto them other servants more than the 
first, but last of all He sent unto them His Son." It is 
not merely a fuller and easier way to receive the old 
messages — not merely an improvement of machineries so 
that they could more perfectly communicate the person 
who stood behind them. It was a getting rid of messen- 
gers. It was the sweeping of machineries aside, and by 
a new and living way bringing those whom the very 
methods of their communication had separated from 
one another, God and man, close together, face to face 
and heart to heart. 

I have been anxious thus to state the true character 
and show the real importance of the Incarnation be- 
cause only so can we properly understand and believe, 



24 SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 

by getting into the spirit of^ that circle of miraculous 
events which group about the coming of our Lord. 
There are two things about the whole history of the 
advent of Christ which will be constantly presented to 
our thoughts during these next few weeks. One is its 
miraculousness and the other is its quietness. He came 
girt round with wonders, and He came so gently, so 
unnoticed save by the few who clustered nearest to His 
life, that the great surface of the world's existence was 
hardly rippled by the wonderful touch that had fallen 
upon it. Of the fii'st of these characteristics of the 
advent — its miraculousness — we are sure that the 
credibility will be more clear to us if we have really 
felt how vast was the importance and how great was 
the necessity of the event. If ever miracle might be 
let loose out of the rigid hand of law, when should it 
be but now, when the King of all the laws is coming 
in his personality ? If there are angels, now certainly 
is the time for them to appear. If the stars can ever 
have a message and lead men, now is the time when 
their ministry can plead its strongest warrant. If ever 
the thin veil between the natural and the supernatural 
may break asunder, it must be now, when the super- 
natural power enters into earthly life and God is pres- 
ent among the sons of men. To any one who believes 
in the possibility of miracle at all, and who knows what 
the meaning of the Incarnation is, the wonder would be 
if it had no miraculous accompaniment. The breakage 
through the ordinary laws of nature's life seems natui-al 
and fitting, as when a king passes through a city we 
expect to hear trumpets and cannon replace the com- 
mon sounds of trade and domestic life which are all 



SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 25 

that its streets commonly echo. But then along with 
the mii'acnloiisness comes an impressive quietness. 
Quiet even to homeliness will be the simple scenery on 
which the super natui-al light is thrown. The village 
inn, the carpenter's household, the groups of peasants 
— all is as simple as the story of a peasant's childhood. 
With wonderful power, but with w^onderful stillness 
— no noise, no tumult. Surely such a description falls 
in with the spiritual intention of the event. It is a 
spiritual mu*acle, and the miracles of spii'itual life are 
always as still as they are powerful, as powerful as 
they are still. So the whole nature of the advent was 
written in the historical cu'cumstances that were 
grouped around the great historic fact. 

In speaking thus of the fact of the Incarnation I beg 
you to observe that I speak only of its manward 
aspects. It is what it does for man and how it seems 
to man that we are able to consider. All the other 
side of it — of how it seems to God, of what it is in the 
nature of the Godhead — of all that who can say any- 
thing ? If any man begins to tell me anything about 
all that I turn away from him without interest. He 
cannot hiow, and it is a subject on which I do not want 
his speculations. I can see the sunlight in its wonderful 
works. It may bring me messages, as it has brought 
to our newest science, about the nature of the sun ; but 
of how the sun issues the sunlight and sends it forth 
no eagle eye has looked near enough upon the sun to 
see. Men talk, sometimes, about the difficulties of the 
Incarnation. I do not know what difficulty means to 
an Omnipotence to wliich nothing is impossible save 
what is wrong. I do not know but incarnation is the 



26 SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 

easy and natural effort of Divinity toward humanity. 
Whatever is loving and good is easy enough to God. 
Whatever is wrong only is impossible. And so the 
loving redemption of his world, the coming to His chil- 
dren that they might be able to come to Him, cannot 
hav^e been hard. I do not know hoAV to stagger at its 
difficulty. 

2. And this leads us to speak not only of the fact, but 
of the 2^urpose of the Incarnation. Let us pass on to 
that. St. John says of the divine Word, not merely 
that He came, but that He came ^' unto His own." Those 
words, as it will come into our way to say by and by, 
have primary reference to the Jewish people. But 
those Jews were typical. Christ came to them only as 
to the doorway through which He might enter into 
humanity. And so when it is said that Christ came to 
His oivn, it is all humanity that stands crowded in be- 
hind the Jews and claims the name. And it is in this 
statement that all humanity is Ghrisfs otvn that the 
real meaning and purpose of the Incarnation lie in- 
volved. That statement that all men are Christ's own 
seems to me to contain two truths, both of them full of 
loftiness and inspiration. What are they? 

The first truth is the essential unity of man's life and 
God's, and so the essential glory of humanitj^ Christ 
came not merely to man, but into man ; and that was 
possible because the manhood into jvhich He entered 
was " His own/' had original and fundamental unity 
with His Godhood, was made in the image of God. 
Here was man, made in God's image, separated from 
God, trying spasmodically to struggle back, failing and 



SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 27 

fallings so continually that the consciousness that he 
belonged with God was well-nigh lost. That it might 
not be lost, that it might be a real and living thing, it 
must be asserted from the other side. Man and God 
had the capacity of entrance into each other. Since 
man would not, and, as it almost seemed now, could not 
enter into God, God would enter into man. Man had 
failed of being godlike 5 God, then,wou]dbe manlike, and 
so the fii'st truth — that God and man belonged together 
— should not be lost for want of assertion. Is not this 
a noble and inspiring value of the Incarnation ? I can- 
not help thinking that the man to whom it seems in- 
credible that God should have been made man is not 
so likely to have been misled b}^ a peculiar reverence 
for God as by an unworthy estimate of man. He has 
seen the degradation of everything. He has seen how 
low the passions grovel. He has taken things as he 
sees them and lost sight of their ideals. He has seen 
the mercenariness of friendship, the squalor of home, 
the animalness of love — everything sunk down out of 
its nobleness 5 and he has said, " There is no place for 
God here. It would degrade Him to become man, man 
being thus." Ah, brethren, if we could only begin at 
the other end ! God did become man, and therefore 
manhood must be essentially capacious of Divinity. 
He lived in a human home, and so our homes must be 
capable of a Divinity they do not have. He entered 
into friendships, and so friendship must be sacred. He 
worked, and so work must be honorable. He cared 
for the body that He lived in, and so the body cannot 
be so vile as men have called it and as we make it. If 



28 SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 

this could be the way the Incarnation came to us, then 
surely it must be a constant inspiration to us that it 
was '• His own " to whom Christ came. 

I cannot stop to tell you what I am sure that many 
of you must know — how real this belonging between 
God and humanity becomes to a man at the time of his 
own conversion. God stands far off from you, and you 
think that you have nothing to do with Him. You 
send Him duty -prayers as if you shot arrows into the 
darkness, toward a voice which you are not wholly cer- 
tain that you hear. By and by that God comes to you ; 
and the surprise of all surprises in conversion is to see 
how your heart knows Him and opens and lifts itself 
to take Him in. '' My beloved is mine, and I am His," it 
says, with surprised and sudden recognition. Christ 
has come " unto His own." 

But there is a yet closer and tenderer meaning of 
these words, I think. Tliey mean that Christ came 
in answer to a most urgent and pressing call of need. 
That is what it signifies when it is said that " He came 
unto His owny For in a true sense everything is a man's 
own which needs that man ; not everything which he 
needs, but everything which needs him. Do you not 
know what that is ? Your child is yours not merely 
by the claim of birth and nature, but by the tie of con- 
tinual dependence. He is most yours when he needs 
3^ou most. He is never so much yours as when he 
requires your forgiveness for some sin. He ceases in 
part to be yours as he outgrows his most urgent need 
of you. So the charitable man or woman talks about 
" my poor." So the teacher talks about " my boys." 
Everywhere that is yours which needs you. I pity the 



SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 29 

man wlio does not know the responsibility and privilege 
of that high sort of ownership. It is a most sacred 
claim upon another to go to a poor helpless creature 
and say, "You need me. I will help you. You are 
mine." Now when it is said that Jesus came to His 
own, is not this at least part of the meaning ? He came 
to those who needed Him ; most of all to those who 
from the stricken earth held up to Him the deepest of 
all needs, the need of sin that craved forgiveness ; and 
that was what made them His. Certainly no level-eyed 
intercourse of sinless man with sinless Christ could 
have wrought in us such a profound and precious sense 
that we belong to Him as this simple knowledge that 
we need Him. Need has its sacred rights. Because we 
want forgiveness and help, and He only can forgive and 
help us, therefore we are His. 

How clearly this shines out in those typical men 
and women of the Gospel stories ! How closely they 
became Christ's by merely needing Him ! How He 
acknowledged their claim ! The sinning woman who 
crept in and touched the hem of His garment was com- 
pletely His ; she commanded with a perfect freedom His 
sympathy and time and care simply because she was so 
wretched and could not do without Him. The poor 
man to whom He gave sight, and whom the Pharisees 
turned out of the synagogue, laid hold of Christ immedi- 
ately, and Christ acknowledged him as one of His be- 
cause he could not do without Him. And who among 
the apostles was more perfectly Christ's own than Simon 
Peter, whom Christ was always answering and saving 
in extremest need ? 

Need I say more about the meaning and the pur- 



39 SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 

pose of the Incarnation ? Put these two ideas together. 
Jesns " came nnto His own." To men forgetful of their 
godlike nature He came to tell them that they were the 
sons of God ; and to men who could not do without Him 
He came because they needed Him. Oh, my dear friends, 
by what high warrants does the Saviour claim us for 
His own! Because we are His Father's children, and 
because we are so needy, therefore our divine Brother 
comes. He comes to you and says, '^You called Me." 
And yoQ look up out of your w^orldliness and say, " Oh 
no ! I did not call. I do not know You ! " But He says, 
calmly, "You did, although you do not know it. That 
power of being godlike which is in you, crushed and 
unsatisfied — -that summoned Me ; and that need of 
being forgiven and renewed which you will not own — 
that summoned Me. And here I am ! Now wilt thou 
be made whole ? If thou canst beheve, all things are 
possible to him that beheveth." Just as all through the 
crowds of Jerusalem there must have been many who 
walked with a sense that they peculiarly belonged to 
the great Healer — one with his healed arm that once 
was withered, another with the new-given sight in his 
ej^es, another with his body yet missing the long pos- 
session of the demon who was cast out yesterday, each 
with some need which had been recognized and sup- 
plied — so through this congregation there are many 
who rejoice that they are Christ's. They needed Him 
and He owned their need. He took them, He forgave 
them. He holds them, and nothing shall pluck them out 
of His hands. 

3. We turn, then, in a few last words, to describe, if 
we can, the result of the Incarnation as it is pictured in 



SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 31 

this great descriptive verse. There are two classes. 
"He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. 
But as nuxny as received Him, to them gave He power 
to become the sons of God." Those who received Him 
and those who refused Him. Here we are come to a 
division in the multitude, which so far has been all one. 
All sons of Grod and all needing Christ, He came to them 
all, and some of them rejected Him. Here, as I said, 
there is a primary reference to Jewish history. In these 
ten words, as if with one broad dash upon the wall, is 
sketched that tragedy which surpasses any other tragi- 
cal passage in national history. It is the story of the 
Jewish people, chosen, privileged, obstinate, rebellious, 
ruined. But here again they are only representatives. 
These words, " He came unto His own, and His own re- 
ceived Him not," are an assertion of the awful ultimate- 
ness of the power of free will in man. Behind everything 
else that settles a man's destiny there lies the power of his 
owm decision Avhether all that is done upon him and 
done for him shall be effectual or not. How absolute 
and terrible that power is ! Not even Grod's coming to 
a soul that belongs to Grod is so necessarily powerful 
that the man may not resist and in his obstinacy turn 
aw^ay. Men have discussed this very much indeed. 
They have taken their sides. Some have constituted 
themselves champions of God's power. Some have 
buckled on their armor in defense of man's free w^ill. 
Tlie battle has gone on, and all the time, as it so often 
is the case, the question that men Were quarreling to 
settle theoretically was working itself out practically 
everywhere without their aid. The fight goes on and 
the field lies calm under the fighters' feet. For always 



32 SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 

these two, God's power and man's will, liave lived 
along together, God's power yielding to nothing but 
the rebellious will of man, and man's will able to set 
itself even against the will of God. Certainly, as I look 
round on men and see the signs which I am always see- 
ing — signs of divineness and signs of brutishness, signs 
of heavenliness and signs of earthliness, movements of 
God and movements of self all mixed up together — 
when I see man tempted everywhere by God to better 
things, yet everywhere able to bind himself down to 
what is low, it seems to me as if no words were ever 
wi'itten wMch so completely told the story as these old 
words of John : "He came unto His own, and His own re- 
ceived Him not." Not a soul unvisited of God — truly 
man is not that 5 a soul always claimed by the highest, 
and only by its own choice giving itself away to the 
lowest. That is the seriousness and solemnity of Ad- 
vent-time. Christ's invitations force us to self-decisions. 
He comes to us, and we must accept Him or refuse Him. 
'' For j udgment I am come into this world," He declared. 
But turn to the other side : "As many as received 
Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God." 
There is no time here, at a sermon's very end, to tell 
what the whole blessing of the Incarnation is to those to 
whom it brings its richest fruits. But there are some 
texts in the Bible which, if you simply let them rest in 
your mind, floating on the waves of your experience, 
will open their meaning gradually to your conscious- 
ness. This text is one of them : If you receive Christ, 
you shall be a son of God. " Ah, but," you say, a little 
puzzled, " I always have teen God's child. I was made 
so. I always have been so." Have you, my dear friend ? 



SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 33 

Were you indeed God's child in those unchildlike hours 
and years Avhen you went youi- own proud way witliout 
humility and without a j)rayer f Were you God's child 
when you forgot your Father and lived as if your own 
will were your only law ? Were you God's child then f 
'' Yes," you say. " Rebellious as I was, rebellious as I 
am, I am God's child still. Nothing can disinherit me. 
He is my Father." And you are right. The privileges 
of your creation, the possibilities of your relation to 
Divinity, nothing has destroyed. But oh, my friend, if 
some one were to come and bring that Father to you 
with such con^-incing evidence of His love that all your 
indifference and rebellion should go down, and you 
should find yourself thoroughly at your Father's feet, 
claiming your long-neglected souship, calling Him 
'' Father," and begging Him to take and rule and lift 
your life — tell me, would it not be right and just to say 
of him who did this for you that he gave you power to 
become a son of God ? Would you not sa}^ of him that 
he ga\'e you back your Father ? This is what the Re- 
deemer does. He takes the native capacity and trains 
it into a live and active fact. He rebuilds the broken 
bridge. So He is our great Pontifex, our great High 
Priest, bringing God and man together; once more 
opening a channel through which the hindered and im- 
patient love of God may flow, and once more opening 
the powers in man that can respond to that love ; so 
reconstructing the family in heaven and earth; giving 
l^ack the Father to the children and the children to the 
Father; making God man's Father, giving man the 
power to become the sons of God. 

The sons of God — that is what we want to be. We 



34 SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 

can be that by the power of the Incarnation. If we 
accept Christ He will teach ns His truth^ He will give ns 
His law, He wiU help us to obey it. To ns^ become 
obedient, He will nnf old His natnre more and more. He 
Avill show Himself to ns. We shall see Him, and, as He 
said Himself, he who has seen Him has seen the Father. 
That is the salvation of the incarnate Christ, 



III. 

THIRD SUNDAY IX ADVENT. 

"He "was not that Light, but was seut to bear T\-itriess of that 
Light." — John i. 8. 

'^ Where does the power come from ? " is the natural 
question always when we are watching any strong effect. 
'' Where did it begin f " we cuiiously ask as we stand by 
the side of any process and watch its steady flow. What 
pleasure is greater on a summer's day than to trace a 
mountain brook back ah)ng its bed, keeping up-stream, 
seeing it grow thinner and thinner, until at last we find 
it issuing from the hidden spring under the high crest 
of the hil] ; or to track a mechanical process back 
through a great factory, from the hammer that strikes 
the anvil to the boiler that makes the steam ; or, most 
of all, to follow a series of human activities along the 
chain of influences that bind each man's action to the 
one before it as lakes are strung upon a silver stream, 
until at last we come to some strong man whose act 
seems to have had no father-act behind it, but to have 
started out of the creative fountain of his own strong 
will? Such search for the seats of original power is 
among the fii'st instincts and the keenest pleasures of 
the human mind. And when such a source of power 
is found, then the human soul bows down before it and 



36 THIRD SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 

pours out its reverence. All idolatry is merely the 
giving to some secondary cause that virtue and regard 
which can belong only to the Highest and First Cause : 
to worship the sun instead of the God who makes him 
shine ; to deify a hero or sage into the place of the God 
who makes him brave or wise ; to glorify an abstract 
virtue until it sits cloudily in the place of the distinct 
personal God in whose nature all virtue has its being — 
these are the great types in which idolatry has prevailed 
among mankind. And to-day the man who is looking 
to his money or his education or his good repute or his 
family for the satisfaction and the culture which God 
gives us through them all, but which neither of them 
gives us of and by itself, he is the modern idolater. 
He, like all the idolaters of old, has cut the channels of 
life off from the source of life, and sits with his thirsty 
lips pressed to their dry mouths, getting no real refresh- 
ment, however he may delude himself. 

The words which I have made my text were written 
about John the Baptist. His life was certainly one of 
the most original in the whole New Testament. It 
must have seemed so to his contemporaries. To the 
multitude of Pharisees and Sadducees, men and women, 
rich and poor, good and bad, who went streaming from 
Jerusalem down to the banks of the Jordan to hear him 
preach, how new and refreshing it must have seemed ! 
So different from all the people who said what other 
people told them and were what other people made 
them, here was a man who was himself and spoke 
things of his own. It must have seemed as if that 
light that shone with such a new and piercing luster 
were certainly a light that burned by its own radiance ; 



THIRD SlTs^DAY IN ADVENT. o/ 

as if tlie fonntaiu that their old prophets had said 
should be opened for sin and for nneleanness had really 
burst the ground at last, so clear, strong, new, and in- 
dependent, like a spring of fresh water bursting up in 
the very middle of a brackish pool, the life of John the 
Baptist must have dashed in among their ordinary ex- 
perience of scribes and Levites. 

We can see such a feeling. They evidently wanted to 
worship him. There were all the materials for a full- 
made idolatry ; and the nobleness of John the Baptist's 
character is shown most of all in the way in which he 
swept it all aside. He said of himself again and again, 
wdiat John the Ev^angelist says of him in this verse, that 
he was not an original source of light or power, but that 
all the force of his life consisted in the way in which he 
reflected upon men the Light that came on him from 
above : " He was not that Light, but was sent to bear 
witness of that Light." The life of the Baptist does 
furnish us the completest study of the truest " original- 
ity." In that way I want it to point our subject to-day. 
But at the very outset he tells us, and the Evangelist 
tells us of him, that his originality consisted not in the 
structure of liis own life or its ability to send out power 
from itsehfJout solely in the way in which it caught the 
life of Chri^ and made that influential in the world. 

Here is the figure. I see what seems to me to be a 
smi bm-ning in the distance. I go up to it and find it 
is no s)in, but only a mirror, and looking up at the 
aiigles which the mirror points, there is the true sun 
blazing overhead. The power of the mirror is only 
tat it has caught the sun on a peculiar surface and 
flashed it in a new direction, on a new level, in the eyes 



38 ' THIRD SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 

of men. Is there anytliing in a theory of human great- 
ness and effectiveness Kke this that helps exjDlain any of 
the commonest phenomena we see ? At the very first 
statement of it I think there is.- When we look at onr 
fellow-men there is much that bewilders us. In the first 
place, their inconsistencies. They are such strange mix- 
tures. At one moment we are ready to fall down before 
them for something that they do, and almost worship 
them ; and the next moment something else occurs that 
makes us almost hate to think that we are men. This 
double nature is always turning its different sides upon 
us. What shall we think of this brother man of oiu'S 
(and what we think of him we must think of ourselves, 
for we know that we are like him) f Is he gold or clay, 
precious or worthless? And there is also the strange 
look of only TiaJf-appropriation, half -owner ship, in the 
best things that they are and do, which we have all seen 
in other men, and felt something of, also, in ourselves. 
When a man does an act of higher puritj^ or unselfish- 
ness than usual he seems to be at once vaguely im- 
pressed mth the sense that it was not he that did it ; 
that some higher power has but used him as an instru- 
ment ; that it was the act of God in him. Now, taking 
these two phenomena, not to speak of any other — this 
blurred and mottled life, with its double natures, and 
this strange misgiving that the best that is in us does 
not belong to us — two facts of universal human con- 
sciousness — what theory could explain them like this : 
that no man is a separate, rounded character, indej)en- 
dent of any other, carrying his owm qualities included 
in himself ; that every man is a medium through whom 
God expressed Himself with more or less of clearness 



THIRD SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 39 

aud effectiveness, according to tlie transparency or 
dimness of the character on which His hfe falls ? We 
are like windows through which a higher hght is al- 
ways falling: but the window is blurred and mottled 
because at some places it is stained deep and will not 
let the light through 5 and where it does receive it, it is 
always conscious of receiving. The radiance with which 
it shines comes to it from without — not it sliines, but 
the light shines through it. 

This is the fundamental idea of the dependent, the 
related, humanity. We learn to count men, thus, not 
by the witness that the^^ bear of themselves, but hy the 
witness that they bear of God. Not merely these nota- 
ble phenomena of human life which I have suggested, 
bat many others of the most subtle and perplexing, 
become clearer to us when we have once reached this 
conception of the unity of the universe, of the way in 
which man exists and manifests himself only in relation 
toward God. '' Christ is aZ?, and in cdV ■ or, in Paul's 
phrase, ^^ None of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth 
to himself. Whether we live, therefore, or die, we are 
the Lord's." 

And jet let us not think that this limits or impairs 
the sacred and precious truth of pei*sonality. It might 
seem at first as if it led on to a horrible idea — to the 
idea that our personality consisted only in those ele- 
ments of our own selfhood with which each of us ob- 
scures the divine light that is trying to express itself 
by each of us. It would, indeed, be a horrible idea to 
hold that our individuality lay onl}^ in oui- sin and im- 
j)erf ection ; that if you could cleanse every man of sin 
and lift every man to perfect harmony with God, then 



40 THIRD SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 

men would be all just alike : that this separateness from 
one another which makes every man himself would all 
be lost, and one uniform divine life blot ont and super- 
sede this multitudinous variety of human character. 
It is a groundless fear. The substance of these single 
mirrors which each of us would hold then in their per- 
fect purity to God is still so different that each must 
reflect God in its own way. None of them could utter 
Him completely. Each must catch and send forth that 
part of Him for which it had most fitness ; and so still 
in a world of saints, as in this world, all stained and 
mangled with its sin, the beautiful variety of character 
must be preserved, and each man be himself more evi- 
dently the more evidently that he shone with God. 

It must be so, surely. Holiness does not make men 
monotonous. The dimmer the light the more things 
look alike. Increase the light and then you see how 
different they are. Childhood with its bright hopeful- 
ness, and manhood with its enterprise, and womanhood 
with its tenderness — each grows more specially itself at 
the touch of grace. The old man and the young man, 
the thinker, the artist, the worker, the merchant, the 
doctor, and the lawj^er — out of each comes up to the 
surface a profounder individuality when they all begin 
to live to God. And the subtler differences which dis- 
tinguish man from man and woman from woman, mak- 
ing each being a separate thought of God, unlike any 
other — these become clearer as the idea of God in the 
creation of each becomes more fully realized. The 
pebbles lie dull and dead and all gray alike in the dry 
bed of the brook till with the spring freshet the water 
comes pouring down and wets them all alike and brings 



THIRD SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 41 

out their beautiful variety of color and makes tliem all 
differeut. 

Here, then, I think, we have the religioiis conception 
of originalit}'. How strangely men talk "about being 
original ! They are always passing on, as they grow to 
be more and more of men, to deeper and deeper sorts 
of originality. First we have the mere boy's notion of 
being original, which some men who never deepen seem 
never to outgrow. It is the mere originality of dress 
and habits. To look different from other people, to 
wear other clothes, to live in some strange house, to 
adopt some strange set of phrases, some peculiar style 
of talk, to be somehow eccentric, to separate one's self 
somehow from this great indistinguishable crowd, so 
that men may distinguish our figure from the multitude 
as we sweep by, and say something about us or ask 
somebody who we are — this is the most superficial form 
of the desire for originality which, perhaps, almost all 
young men feel at some time, but pass out of and out- 
grow, but which now and then some poor old creature 
lives in all his days. Beyond this mere originality of 
habits runs the desire for originality of opinions and 
ideas. Not to think over again what all the common 
herd are thinking, to start some new idea, to send forth 
something that shall show our fellows that this machi- 
nery within us does not work just the same Avith all the 
mental machinery in all the world — this is tlie higher 
ambition of a higher man. Both of these are struggles. 
They are the efforts of a man to make himself original. 
They have their origin and their limit in his own self-" 
esteem. Different from both of them is that religious 
consciousness which the devout man has that God made 



42 THIRD SITNDAY IN ADVENT. 

him special, for a special purpose, for a special exliibi- 
tion of himself ; and so the desire to he himself com- 
pletely, in order that no purpose which Grod had in his 
creation ma^^ fail through his being distorted or ob- 
scured. This is a desire for the divine originality of 
cliarader which God intended, and is fai' above the 
lower desires for mere originality of look or of opinion. 
Many men try to be John the Baptists by wearing the 
skins and eating the locusts and wild honey. Others 
would be John the Baptists by preaching strange doc- 
trines to the Pharisees and the people. Very few seek 
to live the life that he lived by recognizing that they 
are sent into the world, not to shine themselves, but 
merely by some way of their own to bear witness of the 
Light of God. 

But, once having readied this idea of human life, it 
would seem certain that a man must make very little 
of the lower and more superficial ways of emphasizing 
his own personality and seeming to be original. The 
mere effort to look different from other people or to be 
the utter er of new and startling thoughts must seem 
very insignificant to a man who has come calmly to the 
knowledge that God meant something separate and 
special by his life^ that God made him for something, 
and who is therefore trying to be so pure and obedient 
and truthful — in one word, so trul^^ himself — that God 
can say and do by him all that He designed. Such a 
man will resent any interference with the truthfulness 
and obedience of his life no matter whence it comes, 
but he will easil}^ conform himself to the ordinary in- 
different ways of living that he finds about him. The 
higher view that a man gets of life the more able he 



THIRD SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 43 

will be to disting'uisli just where he ought and where he 
ought not to conform his individuality to the standards 
and habits of his fellow-men. The cheap and superficial 
aspirant for originality is apt to be rebellious in small 
and insignificant details and to be servile all the while 
before the worst requirements of social life. The trne 
disciple of God will be yielding enough in indifferent 
details, but firm as a rock against the most time-honored 
abuses or iniquities. He will dress like his neighbors 
and nse no unfamiliar phrases when he talks with them, 
but he wdll stand out, even if he stands ont all alone, 
against the most repntable fallacy of business or the 
social lie which all the parlors in the town are telling. 
He will be like a healthy plant that does not care about 
the color of the pot it grows in, but does care very 
much about the quality of the earth out of which it has 
to feed its roots. 

Just think how different from what we ordinarily see 
would be the society thoroughly informed with this 
idea of life. Instead of the dreary monotony of the 
many, and the eager, nervous search of the few after 
some superficial sort of singularity, w^e should have our 
houses and streets full of men and women each, simply 
doing his separate duty, and so unconsciously bearing 
his separate witness of the Light of God. We should 
not be asking whether we were like one another or not 
— not trying to be and not trying not to be — but only 
asking always whether w^e were like that special type of 
love and duty which God designed for us to be. Such 
a society I can picture to myself, full of activity and 
yet free from restlessness, having the same beautiful 
charm which fascinates us in nature, where every tree 



44 THIRD SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 

and shrub and brook, every wing of bird and stretch of 
sky and patch of snow, shines witli its own color, which 
is merel}" its translation of the universal sunlight, in a 
variety which has no restless jealousy, and a peaceful 
harmony which cannot become monotonous. 

And to m}^ mind this thought of hfe involves a very 
noble and satisfying conception of God and what He is 
to us. It puts Him in the center of all life, and all life 
revolves around and lives by Him. We are so apt to 
make our God either careless or servile. Our reverent 
feehng toward God is always in danger of setting Him 
afar off, as if He did not care for and had little to do 
with these lives that He had made. And, on the other 
hand, many efforts to make God familiar, to feel how 
close He is to, and how He is always helping the lives 
of, all His children, have seemed to make Him but the 
Servant of His universe, waiting at men's beck and call 
to bring them what they need. How many people's idea 
of special providences labors under this difficulty, as 
other men's awe of God seems to make their souls 
orphans by putting theii' God so far away ! And then, 
again, we are always localizing God — bringing Him 
down to our own land or sect, narrowing Him even to 
our own single experience, and thinking that all the 
ministrations of help or revelations of duty that He 
makes to others must be the same, in the same shape, 
that He has made to us. But here He takes His kingly 
and fatherly place in the center of mankind, and all 
men, with their different capacities of uttering Him, are 
gathered around Him. Upon each He flashes some 
portion of Himself. Out from each some witness of His 
love and power is sent into the universe, not for the 



THIRD SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 45 

amazement of other worlds, perhaps — we cannot say- 
how that may he ; rather, I think, out of the absohite 
need of ntterance that belongs to all the highest exis- 
tence. He bears witness of Himself through the obedi- 
ence of all His children. Thus He Himself is glorified in 
helping them. Here is a kingiiness that does not need 
to be withdrawn in order to maintain its majesty. It 
is the more majestic the nearer that it conies to needy 
lives. Here is a ministry to man that does not lower, 
but glorifies the God who renders it, making man, after 
al], only the humble minister of the God who serves 
him. 

If we want to bring this truth out of its vagueness 
and make it very real we must look at the manifested 
God in the life of Jesus Christ. I look back to the 
story of the Gospels, and as the men and women there 
stand around om- Lord, the account that must be given 
of them all, as they catch their character and their im- 
mortality from Him, seems to be this : they were not 
that Light, but they were sent to bear witness of that 
Light. Msjcj, John, Peter, Zaccheus, the Magdalen, 
Martha, Nicodemus, and the djdng thief — how they 
shine like stars in the fii^mament of the gospel, not by 
their own light, but by His who shone upon them all! 
How clear their personality is as He walks among them 
and charms them out of their artificialness and makes 
them be themselves ! Have you a servant in your 
house who serves you as meekly as the Son of God 
served those poor men and women ? And j^et how, ly 
the service that He rendered to each of them. He trans- 
lated His eternal nature into some new glory of helpful- 
ness, and Avas more manifestly the Son of God ! 



46 THIRD SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 

And SO the highest object of a man's life still is that 
it may give forth some new and characteristic expres- 
sion of the life of God. As the sun shines npon a bank 
of snow no two of all the m^Tiad particles catch his 
light alike or give the same interpretation of his glory. 
Have you ever imagined snch a purpose for your com- 
monplace existence ? If you have you must have asked 
3'ourself what the quality is in a man's hfe which can 
make it reflective of God — capable of bearing witness of 
Him. There is some quality in the polished brass or in 
the calm lake that makes it able to send forth again 
the sunlight that descends upon it. What is it in a 
soul that makes it able to do the same to the God who 
sheds Himself upon its life? The Bible has its one 
great name for such a great transforming quality, and 
that is " ?6>i'e." LoA'e in the Bible is not so much an 
action of the soul as it is a quality in the soul permit- 
ting God to do His di\T.ne actions through it. ''If any 
man love God, the same is kno^m of Him" (1 Cor. 
viii. 3). That is the profound ex2:)ression of St. Paul, 
and it includes this idea. The love of God is a new na- 
ture, a new fiber, a new fineness and responsiveness in 
the soul itself, by which God is able to express Himself 
upon and through it as He cannot when He finds only 
the medium of the coarse material of an unloving heart. 
Do we not know something of this? I live with a 
crowd of people who love nothing better than the 
world and the things that are in the world, or I keep 
company with some unlo'^dng men who call themselves 
Chi'istians, hard men of the commandments, to whom 
the work of God is always an unremitting task : and 
from all that I see of them I get no knowledge of God j 



THIRD SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 47 

1 am as ignorant of Him as ever. But then I spend an 
liour witli a man who has the line and snbtle quality^ 
who really does love God, and I come away feeling 
that I have been in God's very presence, and that I 
know more of Him. This saint has borne witness to me 
" of that Light." And think how independent the soul 
humbly conscious of such a task as that must be of the 
ordinary iudgments of mankind ! Ah^ my friend, you 
know very little how like the harmless mnd your criti- 
cal sneers sweep by the man whose soul is only set on 
serving and manifesting God. His only care concern- 
ing his fellow-men must be a noble anxiety lest he 
should ???/sinterpret God to them — not lest he should 
offend them, but lest he should liarm them or mislead 
by his imperfect reflection of the life of God. 

For there are imperfections enough. What does it 
mean? Here is a man who, I know, -loves God, and I 
am sure that, reflected from his love, I do get, when I 
am with him, some true impression of what God is. His 
life is a revelation. He does bear witness of the Light. 
And yet how full the light that he sends to me is of 
motes and blotches of darkness ! I am sure that when 
I hear him pray or talk of his religion, though much of 
what I get is God, j^t much is the man's self and is not 
God at all. What is the reason that very often your 
religion seems to men seMsh and vain and insincere ? 
They call it cant. It may be that it is their obstinacy, 
but certainly part of the reason is that you are flinging 
yourself at them and not casting on them the pure light 
of God. It is as if the surface of the brazen mirror 
were crumbled and disintegrated and covered with a 
sort of thin dust of itself which blurred every image 



4:8 THIRD SUNDAY IN -ADVENT. 

that it tried to cast. So we mix ourselves with what 
we tell men of God— a sort of dusty, superficial self- 
hood, not the true transparent self from which He 
wishes to shine. Certainty we all know that there are 
other reasons besides men's native wickedness, besides 
their bhndness and obstinacy, to account for their not 
being convicted and comforted by what we try to show 
them of God in our Christian lives. 

I hope that with all this definition I have succeeded 
in putting before your minds what seems to me to be 
a very distinct and high conception of the purpose of 
this life which we are hving in this w^orld. It puzzles 
us so sometimes. What are we here for ? What does 
it all mean ? What is it all about 1 We are not facts 
of consequence enough to account for ourselves. Our 
lives are not beautiful enough to be their own " excuse 
for being." Nor, in full many moods, does it seem to 
us even as if our feUow-men were of so great impor- 
tance that we should exist solely for helping them. To 
think so sometimes seems merely an effort to account 
for insignificance by piling up other insignificance 
which it is made to help. But if any such idea as this 
be true — that we are here to manifest God, to make Him 
glorious by opening ourselves to every inflow and out- 
flow of His perfect will — then it is not unaccountable. 
At least with this idea we shall have gained several 
important things which have seemed almost impossible 
to get before. 

We shall have discovered a possible harmony between 
a profound value of our own existence and a complete 
humility. As soon as you spur a man on to do any good 



THIRD SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 49 

work in the world by making liim think that there is a 
work that he can do better than anybod}^ else, almost 
always you find your new-made worker growing full of 
self -consequence, until you are disgusted with the way 
in which you 3'ourself have pushed him on, and wonder 
whether it would not have been better to have left him 
in his idle uselessness, which at least was free from the 
poison of conceit. How very rare it is to find an ex- 
ceedingly useful and hard-working man whose energy 
and devotion are not tainted by self-satisfaction ! But 
here, if all we do is but to make ourselves channels 
through which the power of God shall flow ; if when a 
man stands up and calls a whole city out of corrupt- 
ness, or a whole race out of slavery, he is deeply and 
genuinely conscious that it is not he that speaks, but 
God (as Jesus, you remember, told His disciples it should 
be with them), then that is won which is so rare in the 
great workers (or in little ones either) : all seK-satisf ac- 
tion disappears. The man is lost in the cause ; nay, the 
cause itself is lost in joy that God, whom to know is 
life, has made Himself hereby a little more known to 
men. 

And again, here is this continual conflict between the 
sense of responsibility and the desire of repose which 
we find more or less in all the more faithful lives. I 
know that there is such a thing as peace to seek and 
find. But here is my work to do, to worry over whether 
I am doing it right, to keep myself restless over how it 
will turn out. ^^My ^t•orA'," I say ; but if I can know that 
it is not my work, but God's, should I not cast away 
my restlessness, even while I worked on more faithfully 
and untiringly than ever f Ah, there was mighty and 



50 THIRD SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 

blessed truth in all the old theologies, hard and mis- 
chievons as they often grew to be, that magnified God 
and made man the humblest of instruments ; that aimed 
to lose the man in God as ntterly as jDossible. If I 
conld poni' through all the good plan over which I am 
laboring the certainty that all that is good in it is God's 
and must succeed, how that certainty would drive the 
darkness out of it ! and while I worked harder than 
ever, my work would have something of the calmness 
with which He labors always. This must have been 
what Jesus promised when He said, ''ill?/ peace I give 
nnto you." This must have been v;hat Paul meant 
when he said, " Work out your own salvation : for it is 
God which worketh in you." " Fear and trembling " still, 
but no dismay, no hastening or discontent. 

But, more tlian all, this truth seems to me povferf ul 
because it so brings out the wickedness of sin. It is so 
easy for us to make our sins seem insignific^ant. What 
are the}^ ? '^ The perversions of good passions — that is 
all." Lust^ cruelty, even falsehood, the meanest and 
most confessedly contemptible of sins — how readily we 
find apologies for all of them ! Men may make them 
of little account from every point of view excepting 
one. Only when men have dared to think of them- 
selves sublimely, as possible reflections of the life of 
God on earth — only then does sin become essentially 
and forever horrible. Be sure of this in all your 
thinking about yourself and all jonr preaching to your 
fellow-men : that yon can never make them see their 
sins aright except by seeing rightly the very highest 
idea and possibility of their existence. If you conld 
see the divine life which that sin of yours yesterday 



THIRD SUNDAY IX ADYEXT. 51 

hindered aud blurred, how you would hate it ! We 
iieYer shall be as glad as the augels are that a sinner 
is forgJYen (be that sinner ourself or some poor brother) 
till we first see as the angels see what sin intei'feres 
with and destroys — how idleness blni'S like a cloud, and 
selfishness coYers with great spots of blackness, and 
impiety breaks with a blow that pure human life which 
was made to reflect God, to bear witness of the Light. 
And, once more, this trntli seems to me to tlirow a 
flood of hght upon the whole work of the Lord Jesns 
Christ. What was He doing in those hard three and 
thh-ty years? " Redeeming ns," we say. Yes, at great 
cost, bringing us back again to what He made ns first 
to be ; cleansing the clouded mirror : making man once 
more fit to be the witness of God. Men ask wherein the 
vh'tue of his Atonement lay. Was it in His life ? Was 
it in His death ? And we must answer, ^' Uveri/icJiere ! " 
WhercYcr any cloud was swept away, any stain loosened 
so that it could fall otf from the muTor-soul, any re- 
storal made in the injured substance of the soul itseK, 
any power used to turn back again the soul's face which 
had been tui*ned away from God — whercYer that mar- 
velous Being, liYing and dying, wrought any restoral 
in man, or made clearer the atmosphere between God 
and man, there was, there is in His continual work, the 
perfect Atonement which He came to make. And this 
we are sure of : that so long as men will keep in mind 
and heart vfhat the final purpose of Christ's Redemp- 
tion was — to restore a pure humanity that could receiYe 
and utter God — so long there is no serious danger that 
anything unworthy, anything too mercantile or brutal, 
can come into their theories about the method of the 



52 THIRD SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 

Redemption ; or, if it finds its way there tlirongh any 
wrong teaching, its harm mnst be neutralized. 

I hope I have not seemed to-day to take too large 
and vague a \riew of human life; to talk about the 
architecture of the heavens when you were trying to 
learn how to build your house-roofs. I believe in 
these larger conceptions of life which men call vague. 
I must have some notion in general of what I am alive 
for, or I cannot live rightly from hour to hour, this 
evening and to-morrow morning. Much that seems 
pett}^ and paltry in our ordinary life can only be exalted 
and made tolerable oy being taken up and lost in some 
great idea of life — as the tawdrinesses and poor work 
that abounds in a great building like St. Peter's Church 
at Eome is all harmonized and subdued and made of 
use in the mighty vastness of the whole great building. 
Ten thousand men become machines, I believe, from 
too narrow, where one man becomes a visionary from 
too large, theories of life. 

This be our thought of life, then. It is not for what 
we are that we are living, but that something more of 
what God is may become evident and effective in the 
world. There is a purpose of life which we never can 
outgrow. We shall go up to heaven some day, and as 
we stand before His throne still there will be witness of 
God for each of us to bear — some witness, I believe, 
which no other soul in all the universe could bear but 
we. The heavens will be telling the glory of God for- 
ever ; and though our star may be indistinguishable, 
somewhere in all the flood of radiance shall be the light 



THIRD SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 53 

it slieds — a witness special and different in color from 
all the others which are reflecting- that Light which is 
to lighten every saint. 

Until that comes, the same trnfch is true here on the 
earth. To every poor snfferer, to every discouraged 
worker, to every man who cannot think much of him- 
self and yet is too brave to despair, this is the courage 
that the gospel gives. Not what you can do, but what 
He can do in you ; not what you are, but what you can 
help men to see that He is — that is the power by which 
you are to work. I beg jon to think, in the light of 
this truth we have been studying to-day, of the deep- 
est meaning of these words of St. Paul : " Ye are not 
your own. Ye are bought with a price : therefore 
glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are 
God's." 



FOURTH SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 

" But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth 
His Son." — Gal. iv. 4. 

. No event ever happens in this world of onrs nntil the 
fullness of its time has come. This belief must go 
with any true belief in a real governing and guiding 
Grod. No wind blows and no child is born, no old man 
dies and no bush, flowers, no avalanche tumbles and 
no revolution bursts, no error is exploded and no truth 
discovered, until the fullness of its time has come. If 
a great crime make the whole world tremble and grow 
pale with horror, it came because its time was full. If 
an angelic deed of piety or mercy lights up the world 
like sunshine, and makes men's hearts sing for triumph 
and for very joy in being men, it came because its time 
was full. If we could open the frozen ground to-day 
and read the history of every buried grain of wlieat, of 
every sluggish root which is hiding in the warm earth 
with its next year's blossoms folded up within it 5 if we 
could, know the whole nature of their latent forces, and 
see their possibilities entirely, then we should be able to 
tell of each of those forces when its time would be full, 
and we could prophesy just when the ground would 
break, and just how the color in the flower-leaves would 

54 



FOURTH SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 55 

deepen, and. just at what moment the fruit would stand 
finally and perfectly ripe ; and next spring and summer 
would bear witness to our prophecies and confirm them 
all. And so if we could open the surface of the world's 
moral and spiritual life, and read all that is hidden 
there, and understand the nature of every impulse and 
the powers to >\hich it will respond, what should we 
need more ? Should we not see at once the whole moral 
and spiritual future of the world revealed to us ? We 
should see just when each force would reach the 
fullness of its time, just when the harvest of all the 
struggles that are in tumult here about us would be 
peacefully ripe, just when the world would be converted 
and human nature would be free from its sin and the 
millennium would open on the redeemed, regenerated 
earth. For all those things exist now. They are with 
God in the secrets of his counsels. He is withholding 
them until theii' times are full, and then He will send 
them forth into the light. 

If, then, any one could get into those secret counsels 
of God, he would see all these wonders of the future 
now. The glory that the Church of Christ is to w^ear 
by and by, when she is pure enough to conquer her 
enemies — he who went into God's treasuries of grace 
would see this, kept there by God until the Church is 
ready for it. The delight and peace a,nd joy of Chris- 
tianity, for which, it may be, you have prayed and 
struggled and contended long, and at last have made 
up your mind that there is no such thing anywhere for 
you — ^he would see that dream of all your days and 
nights lying carefully folded away until your struggles 
and prayers had made your soul large enough to take 



56 FOURTH SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 

it and to wear it. Grod lias the world's best robes, the 
heart's best graces, safely kept in the great treasure- 
room of His own intentions, as a parent keeps rich 
garments for his child till he grows worthy of them. 
Whoever, then, can enter into the intentions of God can 
see for himself what the w^orld and the heart will be 
when, after long delay and tribulation, the fullness of 
the time shall come. 

Does not this let us know in part what is the true 
character of prophecy, what it is that makes a prophet ? 
God knows the future by knowing the present per- 
fectly ; He knows the futui^e in the present, sees it 
folded up within the present's transparency, waiting 
for its full time. Whoever, then, can see the present 
as God sees it will see the future as God sees it too. 
Foresight is insight. The two are one. And so it is 
because David and Isaiah are in such profounder sym- 
pathy with God's government than other men that they 
are able to look forward as other men cannot, and know 
what the results of that government will be. In this 
truth, we are sure, must lie the key to at least a part of 
the mystery of prophecy. 

I am well aware that there is much in all this state- 
ment which must sound like fatahsm. But it is very 
possible for providence and fatalism to sound alike, and 
yet they stand as far apart as the two poles, as heaven 
and hell, as light and darkness. The truth that no 
event can come until its time is fuU is based, not upon 
any iron necessity in the order of things themselves, but 
in the wisdom of an overruling Father who knows that 
to send any gift to man out of its true time would spoil 
its character and ruin His gift altogether. 



FOURTH SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 57 

This fullness of time consists of two parts, is of two 
kinds ; it is both, external and internal. It is internal 
in so far that no event can happen except as the result 
of a certain logical process of preparation Avhich mnst 
come first. The life of Moses, let us say, conld never 
have been lived, the character of Moses could never 
have existed, till first there had come the patriarchs and 
the Egyptians, the famine and the captivity, which all 
added something to the character which was then born 
into the son of the bondwoman who was found among 
the bulrushes upon the Nile. And then there is the ex- 
ternal pi%iarEtion, which consists in such an ordering 
of surrounding events as makes it possible for a certain 
character, when it is born into the world, to do a useful 
and efficient work there. Pharaoh and the Israelitish 
brethren of Moses had reached, in their relations to 
one another, just that point which needed such a man as 
he was, and so he came in the fullness of time. Or take 
another case. America was discovered, as we can see, 
in the fullness of time. First there had to come the 
long education of the world which made possible the 
energy and patience and skill that achieved the task. 
And then we can see how it had been kept until the 
pressure of the crowded life and the fermentations of 
the new activity of the Old World called for another 
continent to work out to greater issues the problem of 
human history. Then the great curtain was withdrawn 
— then, in the fullness of time. Or, yet again, take the 
more personal case of which I spoke : a man, a Chris- 
tian, after long struggles and doubt, attains to peace 
and faith. Is it not true that God could not give him 
that peace except by the slow stages of an education 



58 FOURTH SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 

Avliicli made liim ready for it, and also tliat God would 
not giv^e it to liim till it was the best thing for him to 
have with reference to the cii'cumstances about him, in 
the midst of which his Christian life had to be lived f 
There was both an internal and an external reason. 
And it is because both reasons, the necessity of internal 
education and the necessity of external circumstances, 
will be there perfectly satisfied that heaven alone, the 
future life, is the perfect fullness of time for man's full 
peace and joy. 

This truth is very precious to us because it puts any 
such idea as accident out of the universe entirely. And 
the love for an accidental government is far too com- 
mon among men. How strange it seems ! You hear 
so many people talk as if a process, a slow development 
from evident cause into evident result, so that you can 
see how the blessing comes, somehow makes the bless- 
ing less and hghtens the burden of our gratitude — as 
if the* things we ought to be most thankful for were 
those that came with least apparent cause, most uncon- 
nected and unassociated with the great continuous cur- 
rent of mercy that fills oui" lives. We have a word that 
expresses this. We talk about a godsend, and a god- 
send means an unexpected and, so far as we can see, an 
uncaused blessing. It is about the same as what we 
mean by that other word which we use, with only a 
touch less of reverence, under the same circumstances, 
when we speak of a ivindfall. It means an accident. 
How strange it seems! It is as if a child thought 
that his father sent him, and thanked his father for, the 
crumbs that he found dropped upon the floor, which 
fell there with no desiern of food, and never thouoht of 



FOURTH SUNDAY IX ADVENT. 59 

being g-ratefiil for the orderly, loug-devised, patiently 
earned meal wbicli in the system of the honsehold his 
father was accustomed to set before him at a certain 
hour of the day. Neither the godsend nor the wind- 
fall is an accident, because law is the very natm-e and 
method both of God Himself and of the wind that He 
"bringeth out of His treasuries." And if we looked 
aright we should feel that law did not hamper or forbid 
the return of personal gratitude ; that the God whom 
we could come the nearest to and feel our God most 
fully was the God who wrought out His benefits for us 
under the dominion of the largest and most eternal 
laws. If you and I could perfectly investigate and 
measare the causes that produced it, certainh' we should 
see that the discovery of the art of printing came just 
at that one point in the world's history where it was 
necessary that it should come ; just in its true fullness 
of time — no earher, no later. If we saw perfectly, our 
eyes and minds would recognize a certain impossibility 
that it should have come a century before — an impossi- 
bility just as impossible in its own way as that the sun 
this morning should have risen at six instead of seven. 
But would that sight anyway weaken the certainty 
that when the time came it was God that enlightened 
the ingenuity of the inventors of the gTeat art and 
guided their hands to the discovery that was waiting 
for them ? Would it not rather intensify and multiply 
the sense of GocPs presence by all the lengi:li of time in 
which He would be seen to have been at work ? Or if 
I saw the causes of my own inner spiritual life, and saw 
a law of growth there, saw that I could not reach any 
high height of Christian life except by slow develop- 



60 FOURTH SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 

ment, that it is as impossible for the soul to be all at 
once what it will be some day, when it stands perfected 
in the full glory of the throne of God, as it is for the 
gray dusk of the morning to be clothed at once in the 
splendor and luxuriance of noon, what then 1 Would 
that sense of the necessity of gTowth exclude Goclf 
Would it make me turn away and say, ^^Ah, this soul 
of mine is a self-growing thing — a thing with its own 
laws and fates wrapped up within itself. I need not 
pray or thank or love or fear about it, but let it go its 
own necessary way " ? Why, this growth is God — God 
ever at His gracious, loving work; and the longer and 
more orderly its processes may be, so much the more 
steady and serene and determined on its end, I know, is 
that great love of God which has me in its charge. 

So let men work away with their statistics and their 
averages and prove how beautifully under all our life 
there run the great necessities of God. Let them show 
with their marvelous exactness how truly everji^^hing 
waits for its full time and then comes, and will not be 
delayed, as it could not be hastened. Let us learn how 
in history and science and character — everj^where — 
cause is the method of the universe. The curse or 
blessing causeless cannot come. And into the clear light 
of all such speculations we may look to get a clearer 
and more loving understanding of our God. I see Him 
now as He stands holding back the inventions and dis- 
coveries and institutions, the great schemes for man's 
elevation and education and relief, that are to make the 
next generation glorious, more glorious than ours — 
holding them back until their time is full. The home 
of the future, the republic of the future, the Church of 



FOURTH SUNDAY IN ADVENT. * 61 

tlie future — they must be built upon the present, and 
tliey must wait until their foundations shall be laid. I 
see Him la}dng* His hand upon some bright, impatient 
joy that is eagerly leaping forward to go out and bless 
some poor, dark, sorrowful heart, and He says, "No, 
not yet ! My child is not yet ready for the joy, with 
that readiness wliich can come only by the discipline of 
sorrow. Wait till the fullness of time has come." I 
see Him gently holding back the shrouded shape of a 
dark-robed sorrow that with slow, reluctant steps is 
leaving the great council-room of His designs where 
they all abide, to enter like a heavy shadow into some 
happy home of hitherto unbroken joy. Again He says, 
" Not yet ! Your time will come. But now wait till My 
children grow a little stronger by happiness; till they 
win in the sunlight a little more faith and clear-sighted- 
ness to find Me in the darkness. Wait till joy has made 
them more fit to use sorrow — then you shall go, then 
will be the fullness of your time." How many house- 
holds there are here where the sorrow thus will come in 
its full time ! and God grant you the clearness, when it 
comes, to know that it is not the destruction and con- 
tradiction, but merely the completion and development, 
of the joy that went before it, carrying you on to a 
higher life, perfecting you for the kingdom of heaven. 
Shall we say more ? Shall we dare to say that deatli 
comes to no man except in the fullness of his time ; 
that God holds back His angel and will not let him 
speak that word which no man can resist — so strong it 
is and so persuasive — till He sees that the man's time is 
come ? What ! with so many deaths about us that seem 
premature, with a world full of children's graves, with 



62 ' FOURTH SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 

tlie strong man eager for labor and doing it so well 
swept in a moment, in a fiery whirlwind, from liis nn- 
finislied work? Shall we dare to say in the face of all 
this that no man's death is premxature, that each is ripe 
with what ripeness is best for him in tJiis garden of the 
Lord's vast culture before God calls him to the next? 
Ah, my dear friends, we must know more of that next 
garden and its cultures before we can ssij it is not so. 
If, indeed, the children's graves are not the ends, but 
the starting-points of lives, and if the strong man only 
proves his hands here for work — of who can say what 
magnitude and importance? — that he is to do forever 
tJiere, then, as surely as the body cannot pass from life 
to death without a cause working out under a law to its 
result, so certainly the soul cannot pass from life to life 
save by its cause and law as well, and in the fullness of 
its ripened time. 

We are drawing near to Christmas, and we apply 
our truth, as our text applies it, to the birth of Christ. 
How was it that that great event, the greatest that 
our world has ever seen, followed the law of all lesser 
events and came only when its causes and conditions 
were complete? "When the fullness of the time was 
come, Grod sent forth His Son." 

We cannot doubt that both the elements of prepara- 
tion of which we spoke are present here as everywhere, 
both the internal and the external. But what the in- 
ternal preparation for the Incarnation was, by the very 
nature of the case we cannot know. "A body hast 
Thou prepared Me " ! How that body was prepared and 
the God-man made possible ; how the new nature was 



FOURTH SUNDAY IN ADVENT. C3 

made ready and the Word made flesh ; how God ap- 
j)roached that marvelous period in His eternity when 
He put on the gnise of a creatnre and came as Christ — 
all this who dares to tell, who even dares to conjectm-e f 
To know that, one must uncover all the mysteries of 
the divine and human natures, one must know all the 
most secret and sacred processes of heaven and earth 5 
nay, one must l)e God — no less than that. Between the 
time when the great purpose of salvation shaped itself 
in the divine mind, the time when the Lamb of God 
stood forth before the Father, sayings ''Lo^ I come,'' 
and the time wlien a Babe was born in Bethlehem who 
was Christ the Lord, came all the mighty work. The 
Deity was folded in and hidden in this perfect human 
nature. The divine mind and heart and soul yielded 
themselves to the conditions of humanity. The love 
for man, the sympathy with man, which first prompted 
the offer, somehow — slowly or instantly, who can tell? 
— wrought out into a visible shape the human phase 
of the divine Being. Only when this was done was the 
internal preparation perfect, was the time /«//, was it 
possible for Christ Jesus to be born. 

And this is all we dare to say of the internal prepara- 
tion, the preparation of the manifested life itself. But 
of the external preparation, the preparation of the cir- 
cumstances which were to surround the life, it is much 
easier to speak. It has been a very general and no 
doubt a ver}^ just belief among Christians that it can be 
shown that when the Saviour was born into the world 
the world Vv^as in a certain peculiar condition which 
made it peculiarly fit for His reception ; that it can be 
seen in the contemporary history of the Christian era 



64 FOURTH SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 

that that, of all times, was the very time for the Savionr 
to come in, and so that He came, evidently, in the full- 
ness of time. 

That is too long a proof to g-o into now. It requires 
a whole survey not merely of that especial period, but 
of others also with which it must be compared. I 
only wdsli to point out one line of this sort of thought, 
and that rather for its practical suggestiveness and 
value. 

On Christmas Day, then, when the angels sang, not to 
the shepherds only, but to the whole world, " Unto you 
is born this day a Saviour,'' there were in the world 
several different classes of men, differently related, but 
all bearing some relation to the promise and to Him who 
was promised. Let us see what some of these classes 
were : 

1. First of all there were some very few who were 
distinctly expecting Him and looking for His coming. 
This class is entirely confined to the Jews, and among 
them to the more spiritually minded and scholarly and 
thoughtful Jews — Simeon and Anna and a few like 
them. To these were added later, before Jesus began 
to preach, the converts of the Baptist, who had learned 
from him that he was the forerunner of Another, and 
that the Messiah was just about to come. How very 
few these were ! The gentle mother and her husband 
Joseph, and those of their nation who, without knowing 
the great privilege that was in store for the carpenter's 
household, knew that somewhere, in some of these 
dark days of Judah, the Saviour was to come — these 
were all ; and even these, how blindly they were look- 
ing: ! How many of them had their own notions of 



FOURTH SUNDAY IX AD^^NT. 65 

just what He must be and just where He must come 
from, that made it impossible for them to know Him 
and own Him when He came ! Tliere must, I doubt not, 
have been many hearts in Palestine that leaped with 
sudden joy when they fii'st heard that the Messiah had 
been born at last, and only sank back into listless de- 
spaii" again when" they went and searched out the par- 
ticulars and found that He had come in Betlilehem and 
not in Nazareth. It could not be He, they said, de- 
spondently ; and so they sank back into disappointment 
and were all the less ready to receive Him because of 
this short delusive hope that had turned theii' eager 
faces to Him for a moment. So that this first class is 
very small. Think of the crowded earth and then see 
how very few are in this httle group that have climbed 
one special pinnacle of j)i'ophecy and are looking out 
over the waste and straining theii' ears into the distance 
to listen for the long-promised footstep, whose sound 
they are sure that they will know. 

2. But besides these w^ho were specially looking for 
the Messiah, for Christ, there was an immensely larger 
class in the world at that time who were looking for 
sometliing — they did not know what. The}^ reached 
their hands and strained their eyes in no one definite 
direction. Theirs were rather the wild hands of a man 
lost in the dark and feeling ever^nvhere for something 
that will guide him, knowing nothing except just that 
he is lost, and that some one must come to find and 
save him. The character of that age is strongly marked 
everywhei'e and is summed up all in one word — dissat- 
isfaction, expectation. This is a character that did 
not belong to the Jews alone. It reached everywhere. 



66 FOURTH SUNDAY IN ADVENT. ^ 

Wherever you open the life of any of the people of 
that time you find this unrest. Eager or sullen, hope- 
ful or hopeless, there it always is. If you were to look 
largely into the literature and history of that very 
interesting epoch you would be much impressed hy it. 
But without going outside of the Bible I may just re- 
mind you how, wherever the life of the Gentile world 
breaks in a moment upon the New Testament narra- 
tive, it always seems to have this look and sound about 
it. Whether it be the Koman centmion coming to ask 
Christ to heal his child, or the other centurion by the 
cross, or Pontius Pilate ; whether it be the Greeks of 
Ephesus or the Greeks of Athens, or the Roman gov- 
ernors at Cesarea — everywhere that you catch sight, 
through this new door opened out of Judaism, of any 
strong and thinking man who is not a eTew, he is al- 
ways one who seems to be standing with an exhausted 
and worked-out religion and philosophy of life. They 
are idolaters who have no longer a belief in their idols. 
The effect was not always the same. Some of them, in 
their disappointment, are seen flinging their old faith 
away ; nay, some, in vexation and despair, are trampling 
all faith under their feet ; and yet others are clinging, 
as men will, with all the more intense fanaticism to the 
delusion which they cannot any more believe, and fight- 
ing yet for their detected lie. But however you see 
them you recognize them all. You see the disappoint- 
ment everywhere. That strange time is all reaching out 
after something that it has not. Never was the groan- 
ing and travailing of the whole creation so loud and 
strong. 

3. But there was vet another class. Besides the few 



FOURTH SUNDAY IX ADVENT. 67 

who were on the lookout for the Messiah, and the nnich 
hirger nnmber who were on the lookont for sometliing 
— they knew not what — there was the great mass of the 
men of the time who were on the lookout for nothing. 
They felt no need. Their lives seemed to them self- 
satisfying. Whatever they were, slaves or nobles, they 
fonnd in the routine of daily occupation enough to keep 
their hands busy and to keep their hearts quiet, and so 
they were completely satisfied. But yet when we look 
back upon them we can see plainty enough that there 
hardly ever was an age which was so needy in all truly 
great motives and methods of life everywhere as just 
that age of the Christian era. It is hard to see any- 
thing that could have deeply and truly fed the earnest- 
ness of an earnest man in days like those. The first 
crude fervors of men's earliest religions had passed 
away. The calm and reasonable and conscientious de- 
votion of later religious feeling had not come. Govern- 
ment everywhere had turned to tyranny. Patriotism 
had degenerated into local and envious pride. Philos- 
ophy had frittered itself away into threadbare so23liis- 
tries. Charity and philanthropy were not yet invented. 
What was there that an earnest man could do f What 
occupation or enthusiasm could bring out the best man- 
liness of men ? What chance was there for any hearty 
struggle ? It was the emptiest age that the wdiole moral 
and spiritual history of man had seen ; and just that 
emptiness it was which made it the fuUness of time for 
Christ. There never was an age which so needed to be 
saved — saved from itself ; filled with the power of sal- 
vation, which for a race or for a man must be devoted 
love and hard work, enthusiasm and duty. It Avas out 



68 FOURTH SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 

of such a deadness of millions and millions of souls that 
the cry for life came out, unconscious, unmeant, but no 
less recognized by Him who watches and answers not 
only the desires but the needs of men. 

These were the three classes, then. Can you not pic- 
ture that old world to yourself? It is the hour before 
the sunrise. There are a few privileged souls or a few 
brave climbers — call them which you will — upon the 
lofty peak, with eyes strained eastward, knowing where 
the sun must rise, waiting, and longing and praying for 
its rising. There just below them, still in the dark, not 
yet touched by the anticipated dajdight that has reached 
those highest eyes — still in the dark, but wide-awake and 
trembling and restless with the vague sense that some- 
where new light is coming — are the great multitudes 
upon the mountain-sides. Then down below, fiUing the 
valley, lying in the dark fast asleep, or playing idle 
games, or chasing phantoms which they tried to cheat 
themselves were worth the catching, not even dreaming 
of a hght to come, needing everything, but knowing 
nothing of their need, were the yet greater multitudes 
for whom all true life was a blank or a despair, who 
knew no high desire. Was it not time for sunrise? 
Was it not the very fullness of time in which " the day- 
spring from on high visited us, to give light to them 
that sat in darkness and in the shadow of death " ? 

And now I said that I had a practical purpose in this 
description of the age which Grod had shaped and made 
ready for the manifestation of His Saviour Son. Let 
me tell you what it was. As I look round upon this 
people here before me I cannot but think I see the 



FOURTH SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 69 

same three classes that were in that world of eighteen 
centuries ago. 

1. Are there not here the ivaiters f Are there not men 
and women here who know well enough that if salva- 
tion from their sins and selfishness, from their fears and 
doubts and failures, from their own had selves, comes at 
all it must come from Jesus the Christ alone, and they 
do feel a strong assurance that some day it will come 
from Him ? There are souls that to-day I cannot find 
any parallel or likeness for except in Simeon and Anna 
waiting in the temple year after year for the Redeemer. 
They are not scoffers, but full of reverence. They are 
not false, but true. They are not light and shallow, but 
earnest and devout. What is it that has kept you so 
long waiting? Do not reject Christ just because He 
comes from Bethlehem when you expected Him from 
Nazareth. Do not refuse the Saviour because as He 
presents Himself you find Him something different from 
what you painted Him to yourself before He came. The 
terms of His salvation may not be just what you have 
supposed ; but will you let Him pass you by for that ? 
Surety there could be no more generous or easy terms 
than these He offers : '' Behold, I stand at the door, and 
knock," He says : " if any mafU hear My voice, and open 
the door, I will come in to him." What answer is 
there for you, who have waited so long, to make but 
this : '' Lo ! tliis is our God. We have waited for Him ; 
now He will save us " ? 

2. And then I turn to others. You tell me that you 
are not looking for Christ. But you are looking for 
something. You are not satisfied. You know you 
ought to be a better man. You know that you keep 



70 FOURTH SUNDAY IX ADVENT. 

sinning when you ought to be holy ; that you are liv- 
ing a low life, doing mean things, when you ought to 
be full of lofty tastes and rich in noble deeds; that 
you are not using at all, or are misusing, the best of 
the great powers God has given you. When you look 
back the past scares you. When you look forward the 
future scares you too. You look around you, and the 
world is out of joint and things are going wrong every- 
w^here. What will you do ? To do nothing is to sink 
down and be lost. I l)eg you to cling to your dissatis- 
faction till it find some fit appeasing. And then I hold 
out to you Christ and offer Him. As if you never saw 
or heard of Him before, I set Him here before you, and 
you must not turn away when you hear Him say the 
very words you need : " Come unto Me, all ye that labor 
and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest." 

3. And what shall I say to you who neither want 
Christ nor want anything ? Poor souls, you are satis- 
fied ; that is the worst of all for you. This worldHness, 
this sin, this death in life, lea\'es you with no compunc- 
tion or misgiving. There is no tossing in the sleep your 
soul is sleeping. And yet it is sleep — sleep only — not 
death yet. There are powers in you to serve the Lord 
with, if you could only get them awake and active. 
Yes, powers as great as that, even in you who think 
that the Almighty made 3"0u just to dance and sing 
your life away — there are powers in you that miglit 
serve Christ with sweet unselfishness, with loving loyalty, 
with joyous gratitude, and with an energy that would 
amaze yourself and glorify Him. It is in you to be a 
Christian, I care not who you be : and so I cry, not as 
to one who has no powers, but as to one who has them, 



FOURTH SUNDAY IN ADVENT. 71 

but is keeping them useless — talents in napkins, un- 
worked mines of spiritual wealth and joy: "Awake, 
thou that sleepest, and Christ shall give thee light." 

And so with all of us is it not the fullness of time in- 
deed "? Is there one of us who can say, "It is not my 
time yet"? Now while the morning is at hand, the 
night far spent ; now while we have, it may be, but a 
little while left us to come to Christ or to come closer 
to Christ, to be a Christian or to be a better Christian ; 
now while tlie Bridegroom's feet are close upon us, are 
sounding already in the distance, oh, let our loins be 
girded about, and oiu* lights burning, and we ourselves 
like unto men that wait for their Lord. 

To-morrow morning we shall be exulting in the truth 
of a present Christ. Will it have a meaning for all of 
us ? In these most solemn days, these last days of Ad- 
vent, I feel most deeply — I hope we all are feeling — the 
richness of the gospel of our Saviour. He gives Himself 
so freely. He asks nothing but repentance and faith. 
He wants our souls. O Lord, we will not keep them 
back. Take them and save them. Let us see Thee now 
as men saw Thee of old when it is written that " in the 
last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and 
cried, saying. If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, 
and di'ink." 



CHRISTMAS EVE. 

"Because there was no room for them in the inn.'' — Luke ii. 7. 

We believe in tlie inspiration nnder wliose guidance 
the evangelists wrote not least hecanse of their great 
wisdom of selection. Every life is made np of a great 
mass of incidents. To single ont among those incidents 
the ones which really were the making of the life ; to 
put the finger accurately upon them so as to say, " This 
and this and this were important in bringing that life 
to its purpose ; this and this and this are significant in 
helping men to appreciate and understand the motive 
under whieh^ and the tone in which, this life was lived ; '^ 
to point out just those passages that shall reveal the 
character and kind of man whose life is being written 
— this is the great difficulty of biographers. This diffi- 
culty is the reason why we have so few good and so 
many poor biograpLies among our books. 

We rather feel than tJiinJc how divinely the gospel 
writers have subdued this difficulty. We do not stop to 
dwell upon the fact that they have put on record just 
those incidents of Jesus' life which let us most dii^ectly 
into an understanding of Him ; but as we read their 
story we find ourselves attaining a real knowledge of 
their subject such as no other writers give. Tlie things 



CHRISTMAS EVE. iS 

tliey tell are just the very things we need to know. 
Even the slightest items they relate are all significant ; 
the faintest touches bring out effects and meanings in 
the picture, and help us to catch the idea of Christ and 
of His mission which the inspiring Spirit intended to 
convey. Yes, when the poor carpenter of Nazareth 
brought his Avife up to the inn at Bethlehem, and they 
were turned away because the honse was crowded with 
more favored guests, and her Son found His birthplace 
among "the beasts of the stall" and His cradle in a 
manger, the crowded house and the rejected applicant 
take their place in the narrative as true exponents of 
the eartlil}^ lot of Him for whose nativity there was " no 
room in the inn '^ — nay, as a significant foreshadowing 
of the future of His gospel, which has with such diffi- 
culty found for itseK a place in the overcrowded world. 

The use that I would make, then, of this apparently 
trivial incident is this : Does not the reception of the 
new-born Christ t^-pify with strange accuracy the re- 
ception that His gospel has met wherever it has been 
introduced into an unwelcoming world f Is not this 
His fii'st experience the experience of all the Saviour s 
life both in His flesh and in His Church — that, crowded 
out of the hospitalities of life, out of the inns and 
homes and cheerful haunts of men, He has found His 
resting-place in the world's sheds and mangers, among 
the poverty and degradation of our race ? What is the 
aspect of our busy and unbelieving world as 3 ou stand 
mid look across it but the repeated picture of that 
Jewish inn in which there was no room for Jesus ? 

For I believe that if we search its character we shall 
see that this is just the form which opposition to the 



74 CHRISTMAS EVE. 

cause of Christ is now most generally taking. The 
gospel is not f onght against or frankly met in any way. 
It is simply croivded out The Christian religion has 
won for itself a certain great respectability. Men do 
not sneer at it as they nsed to. Nay, men who in their 
hearts are anything but Christians are jealous for the 
credit of the faith of Christ. I dare say there has been 
no age since Jesus lived when the character of Jesus, in 
its unsullied purity, its calm consistency, its high-toned 
heroism, has been more proudly lauded or more cordially 
acknowledged ; there has been no age when the moral 
power of Christianity, as the great social salvation of 
states and communities, has been more prof oundly felt ; 
but yet we cannot find a time when the great clead- 
tveiglif, the mere brute /<9?'e^, of a sheer overcrowded life 
has been so immense in keeping out the personal pres- 
ence of the Sa\nour from the intimacies of our hearts 
and homes. This, it seems to me, is the form that 
our irreligious life is more and more assuming — ^just 
a great inert overfiiUness. Religion is met, not, as it 
was a thousand years ago, by a man in mail upon the 
threshold, with a sword or an ax or a firebrand to kill 
it out — the brutality of that folly is obsolete ; not, as it 
was a hundred years ago, by a cunning diplomatist 
in the vestibule with wiry words and smooth-tongued 
irony to circumvent the new-comer and make even re- 
ligion herself faithless and untrue — the cowardice of 
that folly, too, is dying away : but nowadays, when the 
new stranger comes up to the doors, the opposition is 
just the great, impenetrable, passive fullness of the 
house she tries to enter. Christ comes with His truth 
to the intellect. What is the answer f Everv chamber 



CHRISTMAS EVE. 75 

of the intellect, from garret to cellar, is preengaged. 
Science, morals and physics, politics, history, art — all 
these are with us and must be royally fed and lodged. 
For this new appUcant "there is no room in the inn." 
Christ comes with His work to the will. But what 
chance for quarters here when the very entry- ways of 
the human will are packed to stagnation with a thou- 
sand little ephemeral plans making their flying visits, 
and a hundi-ed great absorbing schemes that have taken 
up their permanent abode? What answer but again 
that this great inn is full? Christ comes with His 
love to the great, roomy, hospitable human heart. But 
the hospitality — not so wise as lavish — has it not been 
already more than wasted on a host of beggarly and 
unworthy claimants, so that when the heart's Master 
comes there is no room to spare? Thus daily is the 
scene of Bethlehem repeated. He comes unto His own ; 
His own receive Him not. The world is too full for 
Christ, and the hea]'t too crowded for its Saviour. 

Now if this be true, and this be the special form 
which ungodliness is taking in this age of ours, then 
we must direct what care we have for the advancement 
of Christ's kingdom to this special difficulty, and ask in 
much anxiety, How can a way be made for the Savioui' 
to penetrate this crowded life ? 

And first of all men must no doubt be made to feel 
that it will in some way be of advantage to them to re- 
cei\"e Christ into the plan and operation of their lives. 
Is not this the tone of everything to-day: "Whatever 
can help us, welcome ! Whatever cannot help us, stand 
aside ! " ? Everj^ branch of industr}^ has its appropriate 
rules and its own useful appliances. The whole ten- 



76 christ:\l\s eve. 

dency is to simplify things — to throw away what is use- 
less, to keep all that is essential. The wheels of modern 
enterprise spin so fast that all that is not bound close 
to them by the strong necessity of usefulness is flung 
away and got rid of by the centrifugal power of their 
speed. The great design of life to-day is to make 
things run light and run quick. Every hea^y impedi- 
ment that does not help the motion must be cast off 
into space. But this same great principle which teaches 
us to tolerate nothing that is iiseless teaches us by a 
parallel lesson that nothing really useful must be de- 
spised. I presume there never was a class of minds 
that gave to every new device which laid claim to that 
highest merit, usefulness, such a fair test, and, if it 
proved its claim, such a free welcome as it gets fi-om 
the best and most active minds of our own century. 
There never was such a fair field for a new-comer. 
Once prove to men that your new invention has in it 
the seeds of new and genuine and profitable use, and 
you need have no fear. 2Ien tvill find room for it, no 
matter how crowded this great engine-room of a world 
appears already. What good is it? What can I do 
with it ? That is the only question now when you offer 
a man something he has never seen before. Self-inter- 
est, that great king with his crown of gold, has fewer 
rebels in his realm to-day than perhaps he ever had 
before. 

Now I believe this principle will help us in under- 
standing this phenomenon of a world finding no place 
for Christ. It is full, very full — crowded even to the 
bursting gates — with manifold interests and hopes and 
plans 5 but yet, as we have seen, it never refuses to re- 



CHRISTMAS EVE. 77 

ceive another applicant if it can once be made to feel 
that it needs Him, that He can be of nse. And it is 
only beccuise the world does not feel the need — nay, to 
put it blankly, does not see the use of Jesus — that Jesns 
finds to-day no resting-place except in her mangers and 
her stalls. If ever, close and hot abont the world's 
great heart, that great feeling shall be bronght home — 
the feeling that she needs a Saviour;, and that the Christ 
whose gentle application is at her doors is the only 
power that can save her from sin and sorrow ; if ever 
himianity shall deeply see what Christ can do for her, 
then, in spite of all her crowded fullness, the gTcat 
doors shall find abundant room to be swung back, and 
Jesus Christ, the long-rejected, shall be welcomed in to 
take His place of honor and do His saving work. 

So that, after all, don't yon see that this plea of over- 
fullness is a false one ? I come to you and nrge on you 
to be a Christian. You tell me, " Yes, I know the im- 
portance of the matter, but I am too busy, my life is 
too full — too many cares, too many interests. I have 
not room for Christianity, but yet I know its impor- 
tance and I feel its use." That is not true. You do not 
feel its use. If you did, no matter how full your life 
was you would find room for it just as you would for 
any other new expedient which offered you a help you 
reaUy needed. The fact is, you do not want to be a 
Christian. If you did, the want would make you room, 
would make you time. If you saw and felt how Chiis- 
tianity was to help you, your own pi"inciples, which spur 
you (m. to zeal in every other helpful enterprise, would 
turn you into a zealous servant in the work of God. 
This is the true difficultv. What men need is not new 



78 CHRISTOIAS EVE. 

offers of the gospel — the echoes of these eighteen hun- 
dred years are tired with their long reverberations — bnt 
they want to be made to feel that the gospel, if it could 
once be admitted into the homes of art and trade and 
politics and social life, would be a real help to trade 
and politics and art and life. They want to be made 
to feel that it is no useless stranger asking admission 
and free lodging, for which it will give nothing in re- 
turn, but that it is an element which, if they admit it, 
will mingle itself with all their other interests and crown 
them all with a better and more luxuriant success. 

Fill a cup with water so that it seems as if it could 
not hold another drop. Drop a bullet in it and it makes 
the cup overflow. But you can add an amount of water 
double the bullet's bulk and it mingles itself with the 
other ^ater and clings particle to particle, and the cup 
will hold it all. So, if religion were a mere dead-weight 
to be dropped like a bit of lead into the full soul of man, 
then you might say, perhaps, there '^ w^as no room " ; but 
if it be a living principle that is to pervade and leaven 
and infuse all the life into which it is cast, to give it all 
new consistency and strength, then there is room; and 
i^ you can make men feel this, they will malie room to 
receive the gospel. 

Who do you suppose were gathered in that village inn 
where Joseph and Mary and the new-born child were 
crowded out? No doubt the usual assembly of such 
places : stout Jewish farmers come up to Bethlehem with 
their money-bags to pay the taxes ; a petty governor or 
two, great with the pride of small official business ; half a 
dozen Roman soldiers, brutal in the insolence of their 
great citizenship ) a few travehng priests ; a rabbi, lay- 



CHRISTMAS EVE. 79 

ing down dogmatic oracles to his wide-moutlied hear- 
ers ; and a few inn idlers hanging round the doorway 
or lounging by the fire — a company dead and forgotten 
centuries ago, crowding the little inn and filling it with 
heedless merriment; while Immanuel was born into- 
the Avorld He came to save and '' laid in a manger, be- 
cause there was no room for Him in the inn." Little 
they cared where the poor woman met her mother's 
pain. But do you thiuk if they had dreamed whose 
the birth was that they excluded ; if they had known 
what the new-born might do for them; if they could 
have looked down the fields of prophecy and seen w^hat 
He should do for the world; if they could have seen 
this Church of ours to-day and have knowm that it 
was the Child of the manger whom we have worshiped 
as the Lord of life — do you think that even their stolid 
indifference would not have thrown the poor inn door 
wide open and spread its choicest chamber in what 
faint fitness they could devise for the nativity of the 
Redeemer? They would have found room enough if 
they had known it w^as the only Saviour of Jew or 
Gentile that was being born. And jon would find 
room, dear brother, for Christ to be born in your over- 
crowded heart if you really felt that in His birth 
there lay your only chance of goodness here and joy 
hereafter. 

Thus, then, the great cause of this misconceived idea 
that the world and the heart have not room for Clmst 
lies here : we do not understand the nature or feel the 
need of the Christ who offers to make our hearts His 
l)irthplace, and so we do not care to make room for Him 
there. There is another reason. By the figure we have 



80 CHRISTMAS EVE. 

l)eeii using, the birth of Christ in the soul, we mean a 
full reception of His truth, His character, and His life- 
giving power among the essential plans and purposes 
of our existence. Now, though we do not any of 
us fully comprehend that truth, that character, that 
power, we all have enough of heaven's instinct about 
us to feel that it is something immeasurable, great, and 
glorious. You may not love Christ or care to imitate 
Him or to invite Him 5 but you do feel, when you de- 
liberately think of Him and of the world-work that He 
has done, that there is in Him an immensity of grandeur 
and holiness before which you grow ashamed. And 
when this perfect ideal, this full divinity of character, 
conies and demands admission into your life, what 
wonder if the meager dimensions to which your life 
has been cramped show out in all their meagerness ! 
What ! take the pure Jesus into a dwelling so impure, 
take a faith so venerable into a poor abode so vile and 
base, take so great a religion into so small a soul ? In 
the humility of shame we feel that Christianity, with its 
grand motives, its divine means, its stupendous issues, 
is on too large a scale for our little, tri^^ial, frivolous 
lives to harbor, and so we shut our doors and cry, "No 
room ! no room ! " 

Now here, it seems to me, is just one of the divinest 
offices of our religion. It makes us feel the littleness to 
which we have reduced our lives, and then proclaims, in 
contrast with that littleness, the great scale on which 
G-od built those lives and the great capacity God meant 
for them to have. " You have cramped your hfe," it 
seems to say. " You have made it small and narrow. 
By long unspirituality you have made its doors so low 



CHRISTMAS EVE. 81 

that none but short or stooping thoughts can enter. 
You have made its rooms so mean that great truths 
eanuot Hve in them. But never dare to think that this 
was God's phm for your life. He drew its architecture 
on a h)rdly scale. He designed for you great, generous, 
capacious Hves. He built you to be 'temples of the 
Holy Ghost.' There are chambers in your nature, 
walled up by long obstinacy or rubbished by long 
neglect, which were shaped and garnished for His own 
holy occupancy. Man — in the face of all his degraded 
humanit}" be it spoken — was made lit for a birthplace 
of the Christ." If the manifestation of the Saviour had 
done nothing else, would not this be much — this eter- 
nal reassertion of the essential dignity and capacity of 
human life ? The gospel stands forever in the midst of 
little, base, degraded lives, and protests that this is not 
the true exhibit of the life humanity might live. To 
the sensuaHst who has turned his soul into a home of 
lust ; to the poor inebriate whose life is reeking with the 
fumes of stale and sicldy habit ; to the trifler who has in- 
dustriously tented himself about with giitteriug tinsel 5 
to the mean man who has been deliberately cramping 
up his stingy heart, w^alling up windows, pinching in 
doors, studiously making his existence small — to each 
of them the gospel brings its protest : '' You may make 
your lives foul and tawdry and meager; you may 
diminisli them and overcrowd them till there is no room 
for a noble thought or for a pure desire ; but you do it 
at your peril. God made them roomy, and there is 
room for His holy Son to find a nativity within them if 
you will only set and keep their chambers open." 
This second reason, as you see, may rest on a better 



82 CHRISTMAS EVE. 

base and takes a more conscientious tone than the first. 
I know that there are many persons who, when the 
offer of a purer life and free salvation by the gospel 
comes to them, when Christ presents Himself at their 
heart doors and asks admission, turning and looking 
at the poor hospitality to which they can receive Him, 
seeing how small and foul their souls have grown, how 
unworthy of an occupant so pure, in sheer humility are 
almost driven to shut to the door and say, " Thou must 
not enter ]iere. There is no room for such as Thou in 
such a heart as mine, O Lord ! " But let me warn you 
how you yield to such an impidse. It is humble, but it 
is not truly reverent and is certainly not the spirit of 
trustful faith. God made 3^our heart and knows it 
better far than you do. Christ knows w^h ether there 
be room or not. Once let Him in and He shall find 
Him room where you hav^e never dreamed of. He shall 
throw open chambers wholly new to you, and you your- 
self shall be amazed when the great spiritual capacity 
of yom* nature gradually unfolds itself to entertain its 
spiritual Guest. 

I appeal to any one w^ho ever watched the process. 
Have you ever seen a man thorougWy taken possession 
of by Christ? Was it not wonderful to watch how 
what had seemed a low, contracted, insignificant natm^e, 
of meager intellect and narrow heart and feeble will, 
gradually, under the inspiration of the new birth that 
was going on within it, rose up and reached itself out 
on all sides, unclosed new avenues for spirit-influence, 
opened new chambers for accumulating spiritual know- 
ledge, spreading with each new demand into new 
grandeur, till what had been so narrow and corrupt 



CHRISTMAS EVE. 83 

and contemptible by nature grew to a broad, sweet, 
open, glorious new man in the power and regeneration 
of the Lord Jesus ? Have you ever seen a little man 
rise to a great Cliristian; ever seen a dull and common- 
place character grow absolutely splendid with faith? 
If you have, never yield to false humility when Jesus 
comes and asks to unfold youi' life and work the same 
mii-acle on you. 

These are the influences, then, under which the plea of 
the Bethlehem innkeepers has been perpetuated down 
thi'ougli Christian history. Under these influences 
the crowded homes of comfort and content have closed 
their doors, and in the mangers of Christendom has 
been the cradle of the Christ. The knock was at^the 
gates of palaces, and the answer came, " No room ! no 
room ! We are too full already." And to the sound of 
trumpets and the dance, the slighted Sa\dour tui'ned 
away. It fell upon the study door, and the pale student 
turned from his books only to chide the stranger that 
stopped him on his way to wisdom: "No room! no 
room ! " And the Lord of all wisdom turned away from 
the door of haughty and mistaken science. It rang 
upon the warehouse gates, and commerce tossed a beg- 
gai-'s fee to the meek applicant, and bade Him stand aside 
and not impede the crowding wealth that was flooding 
into the overflovdng treasury. 

Yes, in this great caravansary, where travelers are 
met midway upon their journey from eternity to eter- 
nity, there has been room for every interest except re- 
ligion and for every friend but Jesus. Truths which 
were to His truth like a fii-e-spark to a star, hopes which 
were to His hope like the phosphorescence of death to 



84 CHRISTMAS EVE. 

the warm,- life-giviug sunlight, have found an open 
welcome in the crowded world. Onh^ for Jesus there 
was " no room in the inn." 

No room ! And is your heart so full, my brother ? 
No room for Jesus, when Jesus is your only hope 1 . No 
room for Jesus, when salvation never crosses any 
threshold where tlis feet have not been set ? No room 
for Jesus, when, except by Jesus, there is no eternal 
life ? I warn you, if it be so, maJce Him room. Fling out 
your choicest treasures, if need be, as sailors with the 
black rocks in front of them, and the hungry sea reach- 
ing up at them its cruel mouths on every side, fling out 
their silks and gold to save their lives. 

No room for Jesus ! Let the guests that keep Him 
out stand up before Him, and see how full of shame 
their faces turn when they meet His. They know (the 
spirits of earth and hell to wnom you give His place) — 
they know, if you do not, whose place it is they have 
usurped^ 

No room for Jesus ! I assure you, my dear friend, 
my heart would thrill with joy for you — nay, what is 
that ? — the angels on the walls of heaven, and God who 
sits upon the throne, would know it with the ecstas}^ 
that only spirits such as theirs can feel, if you would 
open your closed heart to-night and find your Saviour 
room. 



VI. 
CHRISTMAS DAY. 

"And the "Word was made flesh, and dv\-elt among us." — John 
I. 14. 

Upon one more bright Christmas Day we have come 
to rejoice together in the birth of Clu'ist. We want to 
catch at once the pnre and fresh simplicity of the story 
of Bethlehem as if we were, indeed, there to-day, and 
all were going on just as it did so long ago. And we 
want also to get the advantage of living so long after 
and understanding the richness and meaning of the 
story more than those first spectators conld, from hav- 
ing seen it worked out iuto countless lives and made 
the motive of the world's greatest changes. And both 
of these are offered to us in the Bible. We have at 
once the story of the nativity told as it seemed to those 
who were at Bethlehem on the first Christmas Day, and 
then we have St. John writing years afterward and 
telling us what it all meant, in those rich and wonder- 
ful verses that begin his G-ospel ; the story and its ex- 
planation, how it aU seemed to Mary and the shepherds 
and the wise men from the East, and how it aU seemed 
to the great apostle with the enlightenment and inspira- 
tion of God filling him ; the history of Christ's nativity, 
and the philosophy of the Incarnation. I want to dwell 

85 



86 CHRISTMAS DAY. 

upon the first to-day. It belongs to the great Christian 
festival, not to search into the deep mystery of the In- 
carnation of God, but to put ourselves as thoroughly 
as possible into the places of those who surrounded the 
Saviour's cradle, and see the wonderful spectacle with 
their eyes. But still I have made these deep words of 
St. John my text, because it reaUy is impossible, as it 
is undesirable, for us to forget that there are deeper 
meanings in the event than any who were there had 
comprehended, but which have been made known to us. 
This will indicate what I want you to do with me, if you 
win, to-day. I want you to go with me to Bethlehem. 
I want you to take the three groups who are recorded 
in connection with our Saviour's birth, to look with 
their eyes and see Him as they saw Him, and at the 
same time, by your higher Christian privilege, to look 
deeper than they could see ; to unfold, as it were, their 
simple an d crude emotions and find in them all that the 
souls in fullest Christian light have ever felt in refer- 
ence to Christ ; to see if the entire richness of the best 
Christian experience was not germinally and represen- 
tatively present there around the Saviour's birth. 

1. Who are the first group, then, that are concerned 
in the nativity, that are gathered about the birth of 
Jesus ? Certainly those who stood the nearest to Him. 
Certainly His parents, and especially His mother, who 
had borne already so long upon her heart the coming 
mystery. What was the nativity to her whom all gen- 
erations have called blessed as the mother of our Lord? 
What should we see if we could look into her heart on 
Christmas Day ? Painters, you know, have tried to tell 
the story in exquisite pictures which represent the 



CHRISTINIAS DAY. 87 

mother on lier knees before her Child, who lies before 
her. She is wrapt in adoration of Him ; she is lifting 
up her hands in homage ; she is imploring His blessing 
and owning Him for her Lord. But while that is what 
art has seized upon, it is remarkable that there is not 
one word about that in the Bible. There we have one 
key to the mothei-'s heart : we have the beautiful psalm, 
the Magnificat, which she sang when she went to \dsit 
Elizabeth before the Saviour's birth. And it is cer- 
tainly noticeable that that psalm is mainly of her own 
privilege : *' He hath regarded the low^ estate of His 
handmaiden : for from henceforth all generations shall 
call me blessed. He that is mighty hath done to me 
great things." It is not adoration of her Child. It is 
a sense of what that Child's coming has been to her. 
Because He has deigned to be born of her she is forever 
blessed. Because of this close union between His life 
and hers she is lifted up out of her insignificance. Be- 
cause He has shared her lot, her lot has ceased to be 
mean and wretched. She is sacred because of the God 
who has come and lived in her life. The poor Jewish 
girl is not despicable, no one shall despise her, she 
ne\^er will despise herseK again, now that her life has 
been capable of containing the very life of God. 

Afterward, no doubt, there came the adoration. 
Afterward, as Christ grew and she knew Him more, 
there came forth in Him a Divinity which she could not 
share, before which she could only stand in loving awe. 
Afterward she saw how different He was from her. 
But at first the thought is of how they are one with each 
other, and of how by her oneness mth Him she is 
lifted and glorified. At first it is not the sense of how 



88 CHRISTMAS DAY. 

far His Divinity is above lier, but of bow truly it is in 
her and how it makes her divine. On Christmas Day 
she is not on her knees before her Lord, but she is 
holding her Child tight to her heart to assure herself 
continually that His life is reall}^ hers^ and so that her 
life is really His. 

Now extend all this — make it not merely the ex- 
perience of the Jewish virgin, but the consciousness of 
humanity at the birth of Jesus — and we have- this, which 
I hold to be true : that the first thing which human 
nature feels when it comes to the knowledge of the com- 
ing of Christ is the mere fact of the Incarnation, and the 
illumination and exaltation of all human life by and 
through the Incarnation. With her it was a feeling of 
personal pride and privilege. Out of aU the maidens 
of Judah she had been chosen to be the mother of the 
Lord. But with men to whom the same truth comes 
in its larger way its narrowness is lost ; it becomes 
comprehensive ; it is a sense of the exaltation and illu- 
mination of all humanity together, and of each man 
only as he has a part in that humanity by the coming 
of Grod into its fiesh. 

Carry this out into a slight detail with regard to the 
life of Mary. As Christ grew older this first feeling- 
must have grown only stronger with her. In every- 
thing her life must have been elevated by seeiug how 
her Son could share it with her. Her humble house 
must have seemed glorious, her simple meal a banquet, 
her husband's workshop sacred, the ordinary household 
thoughts not commonplace, because they were not hers 
alone, but His. That must have been the first power of 
the Incarnation. Onlv after that was fullv felt could 



CHRISTMAS DAY. 89 

the second power of the Incarnation be experienced. 
Only after she had thoronghly conceived the dignity of 
her daily tasks when Christ took part in them could she 
begin to perceive how differently He did them from the 
Ava\' in which she did them, and so learn liow her actual 
life fell short of the dignity with which the re^^lation 
of His birth had vested it. The Incarnation must have 
stirred her pride before it stirred her shame. 

So it ought to be Avith ns. So the first simple, broad, 
pervading sentiment of Christmas Day ought to be of 
how sacred and high this human life is into which the 
Lord was born. Not merely the body and the life of 
the virgin — she was like all her brethren and sisters. 
All attempts to separate her from them is a wrong to 
their common humanity. But the body and the life of 
man are able to take in and to utter God. Christ could 
be born into such flesh and such relationships, into 
snch duties and such delights, as ours. At once a radi- 
ance streams in upon them, and they are no longer dull. 
Their luster shines out splendidly. Fathers, your labor 
for your children is not bare duty. Children, your ser- 
vice of youi' fathers is not a weary slavery. Neighbors, 
your daily coni-tesies to one another need not be empty 
i^hams. Men and women, your bodies are not base, your 
routines ought not to be deadening. Each is worthj^ 
of his o^Ti and of his brethren's respect : for there has 
been an incarnation. This hnmanity has held Divinity. 
God has been in this flesh. O my dear friends, if 
5^our lives are hampered and held down by any self- 
contempt, by any feeling that human life is low, that to 
be a man is to be something narrow, dry, and barren ; 
if any such thought is keeping you from doing broad 



90 CHRISTMAS DAY. 

justice to yourself and to your brethren, cast it aside on 
Christmas Day. Believe that Christ was born of Mary. 
Let your soul magnify the Lord with the same bound- 
ing and leaping sense of privilege that exalted hers. 
Let the Incarnation, with all its inspirations and its 
shames, possess and fill your life. 

2. But now turn to another group which also comes 
into close connection with the Lord's nativit}^ I mean 
the little company of the wise men who came traveling 
out of the East, under the leading of a star, to greet 
Him. "The Three Kings" they have been called for 
years in song and legend. There is no mention of any 
ro^^alty belonging to them in the Bible story, but here, 
as very often, perhaps we may see in the legend some- 
thing of that sort of secondary revelation which comes 
through the instincts of the human heart and has shaped 
itself into an addition to the story which, whether his- 
torically true or not, expresses a spiritual truth that is 
perfectly in harmony with the story to which it is fast- 
ened. The idea in the legend of the kings is that of the 
loftiest and noblest bowing down to Jesus. It is there- 
fore merely an additional emphasis laid upon this second 
truth of the nativity, which is the Idngliness of the new- 
born Christ. That is what this second group expresses. 
Mary taught us of the dignifying of humanity through, 
the Incarnation. The wise men teach us of the true 
place of humanity in obedient subjectship to the In- 
carnate. 

And see how their visit brings out also the character 
of the subjectship which they acknowledge and which 
they represent. The King whom they find and bow to, 
before whom their choicest treasures are cast down, is 



CHRISTMAS DAY. 91 

a cliild, a mere speechless baby. Sitting there upon His 
mother s knee, He is weakness personiiied. He cannot 
compel one prostration of all that He receives. They 
are bowing down not to a sword, for those feeble hands 
cannot hold one ; not to a crown, for that tender brow 
could not bear one. They are bowing down to a nature 
which shines all the more clearly through the weakness 
of the flesh in which it has enshrined itself. The}" are 
like true courtiers before their infant Sovereign, giving 
Him a loyalty wholly different from the sulky submis- 
sion which a conquered soldier renders to his conqueror. 
They offer Him their obedience, not because they have 
to in any grosser or material sense, but because their 
kingly souls own in Him a soul more kingly. It is all 
of the sold. That is its dignity, and that is what is rep- 
resented by the Greek monarchs kneeling before the 
little Child. 

And so tliey represent the pei-petual acknowledgment 
of Christ as the spiritual, and so the real. King of men. 
This Christmas scene is the pictm^e of the way in which 
the souls that know Christ always take Him for their 
Lord and Master. It is the only kingship that the 
Saviour wants — not that which awes and frightens men 
with the drawn sword which it holds over them, but 
that which bows them into a far more complete submis- 
sion by the felt majesty of His character and the desire 
to serve a Master who is so gracious and so great. 
Every subtle and mysterious and sacred influence draws 
such servants to Him, as the soft and silent star led the 
wdse men. And when such servants come where He is 
they find nothing to fear — only the divine pity and love 
and holiness incarnated,, as gentle as a child ; and they 



92 CHRISTMAS DAY. 

serve Him, not because they must, but because their 
whole soul feels the privilege and glory of such obedi- 
ence. See how this comes home to oui' life. "When a 
man submits to a failure which he knows that God sent 
him because he cannot help submitting, there is nothing 
of the Christmas spirit there. When a man relieves 
a poor beggar's need because the poor beggar will be 
dangerous to him if he is not helped and grows desper- 
ate, there is no Christmas spuit there. When a young- 
man restrains his passions because his health or reputa- 
tion will suffer if he lets them run their race, it is not 
the Christ of Christmas to whom he yields. But when 
you bear your disappointment because it is good to be 
traiQed, even to be disappointed, under God's education ; 
when you help the poor man because it is a joy to min- 
ister to Chi-ist, and the poor are Christ to you ; when 
you say •' No " to your lusts because it is a glory to be 
pure through gi-ateful emulation of Him who is purity 
itself — then you are coming in the ^ise men's spiiit to 
do the wise men's act : to claim Christ for your King, 
and dignify yoiu- life by obedience to Him. 

So that on Christmas Day the human life not merely 
feels Christ come down to c aim it, and so a man learns 
what his true honor is, but also it goes up to claim Christ, 
and by entering into His ser^dce to begin its fullest life. 
What a relief it is ! I think of those old wise men. 
What worthless kings they had lived under! What 
unrule, what misrule, they had known in the cruel, 
treacherous East, where their days had been passed ! 
Perhaps they really were kings, and then how unkingly, 
how unworthy of their name, they knew that their gov- 
ernment had often been I But here was a true King at 



CHRISTIMAS DAY. 93 

last. Men would not own Him. He was only a baby, 

so weak and so poor. But tliat was nothing to tliem ; 
they had found their King in Him and were satisfied. 
So no matter how men find fault, no matter how they 
say, '' Oh, it is only Jesus Christ ;" when you have really 
found your King in Him, and the law of your life is to 
do His will out of love, then peace — His peace — shall de- 
scend upon you. No more distraction and rebellion, 
but calm, sure, happy going forward through His service 
into His likeness here and hereafter. 

3. But there is one more group which no one who 
thinks of Christmas Day forgets : " There were shepherds 
abiding in the field, keeping watch over theii' flock by 
night." How familiar and how full of rich association 
these old words have grown ! Try to think what their 
story must mean, what contribution it makes to the 
sjrmphony of meaning in which all these attendants on 
the bii'th of Christ unite. Remember what is told us. 
They heard a song of angels, a voice from heaven tell- 
ing them that a Saviour was born in Bethlehem, and 
that glory had come to God and peace had come to 
men. Then they simply stand looking at one another, 
as if in dumb wonder. Then they can only say to one 
another, " Let us go to Bethlehem and see this strange 
thing." Then they come and find Christ, and then they 
go abroad to teU other men about Him. That is all. 
There is a certain dumb, blind movement about all they 
do, yet with a certain simple, eager straightforwardness 
about it. They sing no psalm like Mar}^ They do not 
follow the star nor go to Herod like the wise men. 
They simply hear a voice from heaven telling them that 
there is a Saviour and where He is, and they say, " Let 



94 CHRISTMAS DAY. 

US go there." And they do go there and they do find 
Him. I am sure that I need not tell you what an eter- 
nal element in Christian life they represent. Always 
there will be those who will be exalted with the thought 
of the Incarnation, upon all whose life and occupations 
it will cast a glorifying light. Always there will be 
those who out of much unrest and anarchy will seem to 
come into a rich and conscious peace as they submit 
themselves to Christ's kingship. But such experiences 
will always seem too subtle for some souls. Always 
there will be many whose whole experience will be 
merely this : that, hungry, needy, empty, wanting a 
Saviour, they Just heard a voice from heaven telling 
them that the Saviour whom they needed had come, and 
they just went to Him and found Him all they wanted, 
and then, like the poor shepherds, "made known 
abroad " to other men all that had come to them. No 
doubt in their experiences, simple as they seem, the 
whole richness of those others will really be included. 
But to the multitude of human souls Christ will be 
simply the Satisfier revealed from heaven, and they will 
turn to Him almost as a creature shut up in the dark 
turns without thought, without plan or anticipation, to 
any corner of its darkness where a bright light sud- 
denly shines. 

Are there not moments in the Christian life of all of 
us when this alone is all our Christianity 1 Men tell us 
this and that about Jesus, this and that subtle thought 
about the mystery of His nature, this and that profound 
theory of the work by which He makes Himself our re- 
deeming King. We do not doubt and we do not deny. 
It is as if, when we were turning with full heart aching 



CHRISTMAS DAY. 95 

for sympathy to find our dearest friend, some one should 
stop us and tell us deep things about the philosophy of 
friendship. We do not doubt and we do not den3\ It 
may be true. No doubt it is true. But all is overswept 
and dro^\Tied for the time by a blind, eager, passionate 
longing of the heart that needs Christ to get to Him. 
Men tell us why we need Him. We cannot listen, but 
our heart is full of one consciousness : that we do need 
Him. Our lips can shape only one question: "Where 
shall we find Him ? " Our wills are all absorbed in one 
strong resolution ; " Let us go now even unto Him." It 
is good for us to think as richly and deeply of Christ as 
we can. It is good for us to analyze in patient medita- 
tion, all that He is to us and all that we can be toward 
Him. But oh, let us beware lest any subtlety of thought 
or depth of meditation ever deadens or dulls in us that 
first great, deep longing of the soul for Him who is its 
only Saviour. In deepest grief, in uttermost perplexity, 
often in great and overwhelming joy, always in con- 
scious sin, that yearning, that unquestioning and pas- 
sionate desire, asserts itself. It is as instinctive as the 
moA^ement of the hurt child to its mother, or of the 
parched beast to the river. Always at the bottom of 
such sti'ong experience what is stirred really is the sense 
of sin, and that none but the Jesus sent to take away 
our sins really can relieve. By His forgiveness, by Him- 
self given to us. He does forgive it, and then, while others 
call the wondrous Lord by partial names that utter some 
one side of His wondrousness, to us He has but one name 
— Saviour. He is that and that alone, and all besides 
only as it is v>Tapped up in that. 

Who is this, then, that lies once more to-day before 



96 CHRISTIVIAS DAY. 

the world, tlie Son of God and Son of man, at Bethle- 
hem? Maiy bows down and learns the Incarnation 
and feels the solemnit}^ and sublimity of the human life 
into which Divinity has entered. The wise men come 
and find their King in this weak babe. The shepherds 
see the hope of Israel fulfilled, the Saviour come. Oh, 
on this Christmas Day let us be with them all. Let us 
feel thrilling through this humanity which we so often 
scorn the glorifying fire of the Incarnation. Let us give 
up our lives to Him and beg that He will rule them. 
But, more than all, let us give our souls, hungry and. 
sinful, a Christmas leave to go to Him who is their 
Saviour, whom they will know for their Saviour if we 
let them go to Him. 

It is a day of joy and charity. May God make you 
very rich in both by gi^dng you abundantly the glory 
of the Incarnation, the peace of Christ's kingship, and 
the grace of Christ's salvation. 



VII. 
SUNDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS. 

"And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His 
Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father." — Gal. iv. 6. 

It has seemed to me as if this were the very text that 
we needed for the morning after Christmas Day. The 
festival is over, and yet its spirit is still all about iis, 
and its meanings are perhaps growing clearer to us 
than they were yesterday. It is somewhat as when, 
after the first excitement of a friend's arrival is over, we 
sit down and calmly think of what his coming means, 
and of what difference it will make in our life. The joy 
of his welcome is still there, but its tumult has grown 
still. So the birth of Christ, which we celebrated yes- 
terday, is not simply a brilliant and beautiful point in 
history. It is the beginning of a new order in the 
human story ; and to any man w^ho makes it Ms great 
event, it is the opening of a new volume of existence, 
with new and infinitely deeper, clearer meanings. 

And this is just what St. Paul says. In the verses 
that went before he has just been telling the story of 
the nativity : '^ When the fullness of the time was come, 
God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under 
the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that 
we might receive the adoption of sons." There is the 

97 



98 SUNDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS. 

story. The Child of the woman, who was also the 8ch 
of God, came to tell all the children of women, all 
humanity, that they were sons of God too, and to bring 
those who w^ould receive Him so close to God that their 
sonship should be a reaUty to them, a Zi/e; that they 
should receive the adoption of sons. That is what God 
sent Jesus for; and now when Jesus has really come 
and done His work, and men by Him have become the 
sons of God, this is what happens : because men are 
God^s sons, the Spirit of that Son through whom they 
know their sonship enters them and takes possession 
of them, until their whole life becomes a turning back, 
an appeal, a cry, a trustful, yearning claiming of their 
Father, a crying "Abba." And "Abba," you under- 
stand, is nothing but the Hebrew word for Father. 

Here, then, is the whole process of redemption, and 
I said that it seemed to me the very text for to-day. 
Close to the birthday of the Redeemer what can I preach 
to you about but His redemption f With the songs of 
wondering angels and the footsteps of wondering 
shepherds yet in our ears, we cannot talk of anything 
but what He who stirred their wonder came to do. No 
partial thought of life, however true ; no single duty, 
however important it may be, can draw us off to-day 
from the sincere attempt to comprehend in its complete- 
ness the work of Him whose life covers all life, and in 
obedience to whom all duty is included. Feeling this, 
I may ask you to reach your thought out with me while 
I try to tell what Christianity means by its one great, 
all-embracing word, redemption. We shall be false to 
the spirit of Christmas time if in speaking of our great 
theme we fail to be simple, clear, and direct. 



SUNDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS. 99 

In these verses of St. Paul's, then, see what persons or 
powers are brought together. We are impressed first 
of all by the great gathering of interests. Nothing that 
is really majestic in the universe is absent. First there 
is the Father of all things — He who, as the fountain and 
origin of life, gathers into Himself the complete richness 
of that word Father. From Him proceeds the action of 
this whole drama: "God sent forth His Son.'' Then, 
second, there is the Son of God, Jesus Christ, born of 
a woman, incarnate, coming for a great work — '■ to re- 
deem them that were under the law." Then, third, there 
is the Spirit of this Son, whom, after the Son has done 
His redeeming work, the same God sends to take pos- 
session of the human heart and fill it with heavenly 
longings and desii*es : " God hath sent forth the Spii'it of 
His Son into your hearts." And then, lastly, there is man, 
to whom this heart belongs, for whom this work is 
done, standing at the end of the whole process, claim- 
ing the Father of all things as liis Father, and looking 
up to Him with confidence and love. Were there ever 
verses that had a subhmer occupancy? God is there, 
and Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. And in the 
midst of them all, as the being for whom they all are 
working, there is man. As the windows of these verses 
open, this is what we see : all the prevalent influence of 
heaven gathered around man, and by its united power 
bringing him into the perfect sympathy of God. The 
Father sees him and loves him: the Son conies and 
seeks him ; the Spirit spreads thi'ough his heart the 
sense of all this love ; and then he, loved, redeemed, and 
quickened, reconciled to God, is seen, at the last, lifting 
up his hands and claiming God. crying. •■ Abba, Father." 

LofC. 



100 SUNDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS. 

What a vast chorus of sublimest life ! How the soul 
stands amazed and awed ! Here is all heaven and all 
that is capable of heavenliness upon earth met together, 
and the end of their meeting is complete accord. God 
is pouring His life into man. Man is sending back his 
tribute — rendering his life to God. It is the chorus of 
reconciled Divinity and humanity. 

Now let us try to put into the plainest and least ex- 
alted language the truths about God and man which are 
involved in all this glowing picture. What does it 
really mean, this meeting of God and man ? Let us see 
whether they are truths which we can understand and 
recognize. The first truth is that man delongs to God 
by nature. If that is not true, then there is no possi- 
bility of any rehgion^ — if it be not true that God made 
man in His own image, with the capacity of living a hfe 
that should be like His own. But the Bible says it is 
true, and however men hesitate at other things which 
the Bible says, their hearts bear witness in them to the 
truth of that, and they do believe it. Every movement 
of conscience when they do wrong ; every leap of enthu- 
siasm at the sight of goodness, as if they saw one fresh 
from the land where they themselves belonged ; every 
indignation with themselves ; all their highest memories 
and hopes, are their instinctive testimonies that thej 
know they are God's children. He is their Father. 
That is the first truth, on which everything else de- 
pends. And as real as this truth of man's belonging 
with God is the truth of man's estrangement from God. 
That, too, is both in the Bible and in the heart : in the 
Bible in the history of the type-nation, the story of the 
Jewish life; and in the heart in the testimony which 



SUNDAY AFTER CHRIST]\IAS. 101 

every man's conscience gives of how seliish his life is, 
of how he forgets the duty and lets go the privilege of 
living for God. Tell me, is there one of you who, if a 
voice which he must answer asked him, '' Do you belong 
to God?" would not answer, proudly, "Yes"? And 
how many there are who, if the same voice asked them, 
" Do you serve God, and have you kept fast hold of the 
truth that He loves you "? " would not have to answer, in 
sadness and humiliation, " No " ! And the next truth 
is Christ. It stands written where we cannot doubt it 
that One who not merely belonged to God, but was God, 
came and set as a visible fact into the midst of man's 
life that which man had forgotten or lost out of his 
feeble grasp : that God loved men intensely, unspar- 
ingly, even to the mysterious exteut of pain and death ;. 
and One who likewise, by the human life of devotion 
and obedience which He lived, reclaimed for man the 
right and power to serve God like a son. And then 
the truth of inspiration : that from this Saviour there 
goes forth a Spirit which finds out the hearts of men 
and touches them and melts in with them and makes 
itself a part of them, and spreads through every vein 
of all their life these two truths of the Christ whose 
Spirit He is : that God loves man, and that man is his 
true self when he is filially serving God. He is the 
Spirit of regeneration or a new birth, because the power 
of these truths thoroughly filling a man makes him a 
new life. And then, once more, there is the truth of 
restoration. ^Vhen this Spirit really occupies a man, 
when he is living the new life whose essence is that he 
is God's child, his nature opens like the nature of a 
plant brought out of foreignness where it does not be- 



102 SUNDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS. 

long aud set into its native soil, or like the nature of a 
child early stolen from its home, long kept in a de- 
graded life, at last brought back and set in the old 
household, under his father's care, under his mother's 
love. Look, as he sits there, how bewildered memories 
come back over his perplexed face, how strange famili- 
arity comes out in tlie unfamiliar furniture, how the 
long-smothered childship, like a frozen sap, begins to 
stir at his heart, and his dead life opens, new thoughts 
come vaguelj' to him, new feelings flush his cheek and 
fill his eyes, the colors of his whole life deepen, and 
every newly wakened sense is flooded with the one 
sufficient and supreme conviction that lie is at home. 
There is his father and he is that father's child. So the 
man in whom the Spirit of Christ has thoroughly 
wrought home the message of Christ — that he is God's 
son — comes back into his Father's house, and as he sits 
there his sonship rises like a rising flood around him, 
till his whole life becomes the utterance of it, and he 
cries, not merely with his lips, but with everj^ activity 
of his awakened being, " Abba, Father." 

These are old truths. A long time you have heard 
them. I have preached them to you for these many 
years, and I cannot say how many years you heard 
them before I began to preach them to you. And yet 
I never can preach them without feeling a fresh, new 
hope that the grandeur of the circle which they em- 
brace, the truth of the story of humanity which they 
tell, may come to you as it has not come before. I seem 
to feel it specially this morning. How majestic is the 
circle marked by this great opening, advancing truth of 
man's reconciliation to God ! How it moves from the 



SUNDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS. 103 

light of man's first ideal into the darkness of his actual 
experieDce, and then sweeps grandly back into the 
In-ightness of his redemption! It begins with the 
Fatherhood and childhood. It sees the childhood stray 
away into selfish, sinful independence^ and then it closes 
with the Fatherhood and childhood once again restored. 
All history is comprehended in it. All the books of his- 
tory, aU the stories of the nations, are but single beads 
on the great string of this encircling truth. And then, 
with that strange identity which alw^ays runs between 
the two, it is as true of the individual life as of the 
w^orld's life. Each of us also has his ideal sonship, his 
actual estrangement, his redeeming Chiist, his inspiring 
Spu'it, and then his real sonship, in which he rests for- 
ever.. All other philosophies of life seem to me so thin 
and meager by the side of this. All accounts of sin are 
weak except that which makes it the wilful departure 
from God into selfishness. All accounts of goodness 
seem insufficient save those which see in it the effort of 
God's child after his lost sonship. 

I want so much that you should feel and understand 
it aU that I venture to* put it in yet one more figui*e. 
It is like an island of which some great king is lord — 
a noble king, ready to help and lift his people ; a true 
king, reaUy the soui'ce and fountain of his land's pros- 
perity. That is the first primal relationship. He be- 
longs to them and they to him. Then comes rebellion : 
^' We will not have this man to rule over us." The 
banner of revolt is set up. The castles of the sovereign 
are broken down. The land goes to waste. The reck- 
less rebels tear to pieces the very works which the sov- 
ereign has built for their protection. Then comes 



104 SITNDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS. 

reconqiiest. That sovereign sends himself under some 
representative, some true son of his authority. The 
champion enters in^ and in their own behalf conquers 
the insurgents and crushes them. He defeats them in 
their rebellion that he may bring them back into obedi- 
ence. He sets the banner of the king safe, strong, un- 
assailable, once more in the reclaimed island. Then 
what comes? Through the streets of that reclaimed 
island goes a new messenger, the self of the king under 
some new representative ; the intention, the spirit, of the 
king and of the conqueror, proceeding from the ruling 
father and the reconquering son. Thi^ough the whole 
land he goes, awakening everywhere the slumbering 
loyalt^^, bearing in his hands the righteous laws which 
show how their king loves them, planting Mm anew in 
every household, making men know that lie is what 
their disorder needs to turn it into order, and what 
their misery needs to make it prosperous. And shortly, 
out of the farthest corners and the inmost center of the 
land, there rises a great stir of loyalty. The mountains 
blaze with bonfires and the valleys ring with songs of 
reconciliation. The people have come back and found 
their king, and all the busy hum of renewed labor, and 
the shouts of joy that ring through all its hfe, are but 
that island's " Abba, Father " to its new-found lord. 

This is the gospel of reconciliation. Father, Son, 
and Holy Spirit have met in their divine omnipotence 
to rescue man. Remember it does not float in the mere 
atmosphere of theory, where it seems, perhaps, as if we 
had placed it all. It is brought close to the heart that 
will receive it by all those languages which the heart 
knows best. The love of the Father is interpreted by 



SUNDAY AFTER CHRISTINIAS. 105 

all the tokens of His love which appeal to the lower 
lives. All nature, with her voices of beneficence, claims 
the Son for his Father. All the capacities of thonght 
and feeling which are in him assert the Father whom 
they echo and from whom they came. And the re- 
deeming Son is fnll of pitiful and powerful appeal by 
the tragedy of His cross. While He is conquering man 
out of hisrebeUion, He is at the same time winning his 
heart by suffering for him. And the Sijiiit who has 
brought Christ to us has shed His influence out of every 
most familiar and appealing thing. As the sun that 
lightens ns makes all the objects ronnd ns the reflectors 
and distributers of his radiance, and so brings his light 
to ns clothed with the clearness that belongs to them, so 
to the Christian the Spirit of his Saviour seems to have 
subsidized ever^^thing to make some new and more per- 
fect revelation of Him. The home relations and the 
things in natm'e, our books, onr friends, onr thonghts, 
have all been made interpreters of Christ. Oh, there 
are times when, as one sits in meditation or moves 
quietly abont in work for Jesns — when all this seems so 
rich and plain. A beautiful, serene simplicity seems to 
come forth ont of this complicated snarl. We catch the 
music of one great pervading purpose in aU this tnmult 
and clatter. It is all redemption working ont its plans. 
G-od made that hiUside so perfect in order that He 
might show me His fatherly love. Christ gave me this 
task to do that I might understand His self-sacrifice for 
me. The Spirit brought me into my friend's friendship 
that it might so interpret to me the friendship of my 
God. At such times all seems plain. The world is for 
the sons of God, and all that goes on in the world is 



106 SUNDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS. 

reclaiming and training their sonsliip. The whole 
creation is waiting for the manifestation of the sons of 
God. Those are the times when the world is ideal and 
beautiful and sacred. 

It is always needf nl to ask what any general theory 
of life has to say to the great burdens and hindrances 
of hving, to those things which are always coming in 
to make men tremble or rebel at life. No matter how 
noble or how compact your theory may be, if it has no 
word for these, no help for those who are suffering 
under these, it cannot take possession of men and hold 
them. 

Let us ask, then, What has this gospel of reconcilia- 
tion to say to trouble, to those keen hours of suffering 
when the light seems to have' gone wholly out of life 
under some cloud of sorrow? What had it to say 
to you when the light of your house was darkened and 
the life that had made youi' life worth living was 
snatched away from you ? Whether it said anything 
to you depended upon whether you believed it, wdiether 
you had really caught sight of this as the purpose of 
all things — this plan of God to bring His children back 
to Himself. If you did see that, then the gospel of 
reconciliation had surely very much to say to you in 
your great grief. Of your friend — perhaps your clxild 
— who had gone it had to remind you that it certainly 
was not strange if God, whose one wish about all His 
children was that they should come to Him and know 
Him, had taken this, who to you seemed the most 
precious of all children of God, into His own more 
immediate presence, to teach and train his life with a 
directer ministrj^of His own. Death could not seem 



SUNDAY AFTER CHRIST3IAS. 107 

inexplicable or desperate to one wlio had caught sight 
of a design of life which issued from and which must 
return into the spiritual Avorld, which did not begin and 
which could not be completed here. And for yourself, 
if that same plan included you, if for you too there was 
one supreme wish in your Father's heart that you 
should come perfectly to Him, then it was not strange 
— certainly it was not incredible — that He should have 
tried to draw you by taking to Himself that which was 
like yom* other life^ your second self 5 and you could 
not have asked Him to spare you the pain if it was by 
the pain only that He could take hold of you. As well 
might the child complain of the tight, painful grasp 
with which his father seized him to drag him out of the 
river. Far be it from me to preach any mere cheeri- 
ness about sorrow or about death, as if it were a light 
and easy thing, easy to understand or easy to meet. My 
lips refuse to speak, and your hearts will not receive, 
such doctrine. Death is terrible. Its mystery grows 
deeper and deeper. Xo familiarity with it makes it 
anything but awful. But the gospel of reconciliation 
overleaps it, and on the other side shows the soul that 
has passed through it and been purified, we know not 
how, by it, received into the Father's house toward 
which it has so long been struggling. It cannot explain 
death — there can be no explanation till we each under- 
stand it by undergoing it ; but it can, it does, overpass 
death and stretch its purposes of life into eternity. 

It is not only the suffering in hie that needs to be 
spoken to and helped. There is something else, I think, 
that is almost more exhausting than our suffering in its 
constant wearing pressure upon the hearts of men. It 



108 SUNDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS. 

is that feeling of the insignificance of life that often 
grows so hard to bear. I am afraid that many of you 
know it only too well. Not merely on some moody- 
day, but have you not felt it as the constant temper of 
long stretches of your life — the wonder whether it 
meant anything, the utter loss of any insight into what 
it meant, this work of living ? That is what rubs deep 
into our strength with its dull and heavy friction. It 
rises up like a self -begotten mist out of ourselves. It 
is reflected and shed on us from other men around us. 
It haunts the home of poverty, and, even more bitter 
and disheartening, it sits down at the rich man's feast. 
Who can speak to and dispel this specter? Who can 
tell us with authority that life has a meaning, and make 
us see it and rejoice to live for it 1 Who but the gospel 
of reconciliation? If that is true, if all these heav- 
enly forces are at work upon our life, if all this watch- 
ful interest hovers over what we are doing, if we may 
really go on and be the children of Grod, where is there 
any insignificant detail f Who can help feeling purpose 
run like life-blood through the half-dried veins of his 
discouragement ? Hovf life lifts itself up with interest 
and dignity when it really becomes the cultn.re of God's 
redeemed children for their Father's house ! 

But there is something else. Deeper than suffering 
and insignificance lies sin. Ah, that is at the root of 
all. These are but the symptoms ; this is the disease. 
And what has the gospel to say to sin ? Ah, fancy 
Him who was the gospel meeting, as He walked in old 
Jerusalem, these woes and hindrances of human life 
which we have spoken of. He walks along, and first 
He meets a sufferer, some soul wrung with pain and 



SUNDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS. 109 

bereavement. He stops and lays His hand upon the 
wretched head, and says, " Be comforted : thy brother 
shall rise again. I am the resurrection, and the life." 
Then He goes on and meets a poor man (poor or rich) 
fretted and wearied with the insignificance of life. To 
him He says, " Ai-ise ; be strong. He that believeth on 
Me, the works that I do shall he do also." But then 
He comes to another who is a sinner bowed down with 
sin, sorrowing and sighing because he is so wicked. 
Ah, how the Saviour's face lightens anew ! This is the 
soul He wants. He came to seek and to save the lost. 
He was called Jesus, because He should save His people 
from their sins. And as He says to the poor soul, " Thy 
sins are forgiven thee," you are sure that the Saviour is 
speaking the words that He most loves to speak, and that 
the gospel of reconciliation is doing its deepest work. 

Out of suffering, out of insignificance, out of sin, we 
come, by the love of God, by the Incarnation of Jesus, 
by the ministry of the Hoty Spirit, into the full life of 
the sons of Grod. O my dear brethren, I claim you 
for that life. If you will read jour own hearts you 
will know that you belong to God. If you. will stand 
before Christ He will take you for God's. If you will 
open your heart to the Spirit He will bring you to God. 
And when you come there your heart will know the 
God whom it belongs to, and call Him Father. 

Both here and hereafter it is only in being God's 
children that we are truly men. May God, who sent 
His Son into the world, send forth the Spirit of His Son 
into all our hearts, that we may know and love our 
Father. 



VIIL 
ASH WEDNESDAY. 

"Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose 
sins are covered." — Kom. iv: 7. 

Another Ash Wednesday opens for ns to-day an- 
other Lent. If we have really swept aside our ordinary 
occupations and thoughts in any real way, it is that 
we may look in upon our own lives and souls, which 
our ordinary thoughts and occupations hide from us 
at other times, and see them as they really are. The 
abandonment of any thoughts or occupations is not 
something that is good in itself, unless the things 
which we give up are intrinsically ]>ad, and then vre 
ought to have nothing to do with them at any time, in 
Lent or out of it. It is the sight of ourselves which 
our simplified life in these weeks will give us that 
makes them valuable. It ought to be as when the 
clouds over a landscape part, and one who has been 
standing above, seeing only the clouds which the hot 
ground had flung up from its bosom, sees suddenly the 
landscape through the clouds — fields, woods, and hills 
lying quietly down below. So is it when a man for a 
few moments or a few days breaks through the cloud 
of crowded businesses that hide his soul from his own 
eyes and really sees himself. 

110 



ASH WEDNESDAY. Ill 

And when a man sees himself he always sees sin. 
That is what giv^es Lent its sad and penitent color. 
Think what Lent, the days of self -sight, wonld be if it 
were not so. If men, pansing from their bnsy life and 
looking in npon the self that lived the life, found noth- 
ing there bnt perfect obedience and unbroken goodness, 
then with what a humble but perfect joy these weeks 
would be filled J and when they were over, how men 
would take up their active work again, with only a new 
thankfulness to the God who had kept them so pure, 
and with new trust that He would still preserve them ! 
But now how different it is ! He who would estimate 
himself must estimate his sin. SeK-knowledge means 
humiliation. Not that there is only sin in us. To 
think that, to say that, of ourselves would be as false as 
if we said there was no sin at all. Men try to say that 
of themselves, and it makes all their effort to under- 
stand themselves unreal. No, there is much in us 
besides our sin which we must know in order that we 
may know ourselves. But there is sin, sin ever3'where. 
It runs through every part of us — through mind and 
soul and body. We must understand it before we can 
understand ourselves, as we must understand salt before 
we can understand the sea ; as we must know what fire 
is before we can comprehend the sun. And so Lent 
becomes the season of sadness and repentance, with the 
hope that is always born of thoroughness and earnest- 
ness burning underneath and keeping it from gloomy 
Avretchedness. 

On this first day of Lent, then, I must speak of sin. 
And just as soon as the word passes my lips I feel what 
a vague sound it has acquired. It has grown to be a 



112 ASH WEDNESDAY. 

word of sermons, sometimes a word of prayers, but it 
is not a word of men's most real thoughts very often. 
They think of this sin and of that sin ; but of sin itself, 
as a persistent presence, as an element in life, but few 
men think. Shall we say that the trouble is in the 
word, and try to put some other word into its place! 
Oh no, the trouble is in the thing itself ; it is the very 
thought of being wrong that is so vague to men. You 
never can make a half-apprehended idea clear by giv- 
ing it a new word to call itself by. The new word, 
though it may have been so sharp-Lined and concrete 
that you could take hold of it before, grows dim and 
misty the moment that you fasten it to an idea which 
men cannot or will not distinctly comprehend. It is 
not the name sin. It is the tiling sin that is vague to 
us. I look about this morning upon earnest faces. You 
have not come to church — I will be sure that you have 
not come to church to-day at least — out of any curious 
idleness. Or if by chance any of you have so come, 
with those of you, at least, I cannot busy myself. Grod 
grant that the most trivial and unearnest of them ma}^ 
gather something out of the influences of the day ! But 
my business on Ash Wednesday morning is with the 
earnest people — with you, dear friends, who really want 
to know yourselves. To know yourselves you must 
know sin ; and so to take sin out of its vagueness and 
make it real, to pluck it out of abstractness and show 
how we can find it in our own history and hearts, will 
be my task this morning. 

I have thought how I might do this best, and it has 
seemed to me that if we could perfectly understand any 
one sin that ever was committed — trace it completely 



ASH WEDNESDAY. 113 

from its beginning* to its end — we could hardly help 
seeing what sin is. All sins are sinfnl. All sinfulness 
is one at heart. Let me really, deeply know how the 
mean, base, cruel thing which Simon Peter did when 
he denied Jesus in the hour of His bitter distress came 
to be done, and I shall know how Cain came to murder 
Abel, and how I came myself yesterday to do a deed 
that to-day fills me with shame. That is the sin which 
I have chosen for our study. We shall meet it fuller, 
face to face, when the last week of Lent brings us to 
the trial of the Lord ; but to-day let us quietly look at 
it from the beginning to the end — see where it came 
from, how it grew to ripeness, and by what death it 
died. The history of a sin — this is our subject. 

I must take it for granted that you all know in gen- 
eral the story of St. Peter and his denial of the Lord. 
Assuming that, I shall have to speak about four points 
in the man's histor}^ which mark respectively the be- 
ginning of his chance to do his sin, the wa.ming of his 
danger, the actual doing of it, and the removal of it by 
forgiveness. I can dwell but a few moments upon 
each. 

1. The first scene takes us away back to the begin- 
ning of Christ's public woi'k. It was the bright, fresh 
morning of the Gospel story. It was morning, too, 
upon the shining Lake of Grennesaret. The hiEs were 
bright around the lake ; the lake within the hills was 
bright a]id leaping in the sunshine. Eveiything was 
full of life and j^outh. '^ And Jesus, walking by the 
Sea of Galilee, saw two brethren, Simon called Peter, 
and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea : for 
they were fishers. And He saith unto them, Follow Me, 



114 ASH ^-EDNESDAY. 

and I will make you fisliers of men. And they straight- 
way left then- nets, and followed Him." How eyer new 
the sweet old story sounds ! Simon called Peter left 
his net and followed Jesns. He went ont of the old life 
into the untried new life, following this Master. He 
went out to a friendship and a work that were to fill 
his days with delight and inspii'ation. He went to 
new thoughts, new hopes, new duties. But did he go 
to nothing else ? As he turns and follows Jesus does 
he not go burdened with new dangers which he did not 
haye before ? The chance to be loyal to his new Master 
iiiyolyes the chance to be disloyal to Him. The priyi- 
lege of faithfulness carries with it the peril of unfaith- 
fulness. If from that moment of his choice it is possi- 
ble for him to acknowledge Christ, is it not possible 
also to deny Him ? If the glory of the transfiguration 
mountain begins to gioyr before him, does not the 
tragedy of Pilate's judgment-haU also loom in sight ? 
These two together, both half realized but both real, 
are in the face of Peter, making him sober and quiet in 
all his enthusiastic joy as with his brother he leayes his 
nets and goes where the wonderful Stranger leads. 

And so it is with eyery call, with eyery pri\^lege. 
To the sick man there comes back health. As he leaps 
from his bed and goes out into life with other men, does 
there not come to him a power of actiye wickedness as 
well as of actiye goodness that was not his when he lay 
lan^id in his weakness or tossing in his pain ? To the 
poor man wealth is giyen. Is it not a new candidate 
for meanness as well as a new candidate for charity, 
who takes the unfamiliar bao^s of money into his- 
tremibling liands ? To the childless man God sends a 



ASH WEDNESDAY. 115 

child. All the sins of fatherhood as well as all its noble 
virtues become possible with the first taking of that 
child into his arms. To the heathen man Christ is 
preached, and as he hears and believes, out of the dark- 
ness that has been crowded about his lot come flocking 
dangers of impiety and faithlessness shoulder to shoul- 
der, hand in hand, with all the glorious hopes of his 
new life. There is where sin is born ; there is the first 
opening of the chance of sin. No wonder that to any 
serious man. privilege becomes a solemn thing. No 
wonder that the answer to a call of God is spoken out 
of Hps that tremble with fear while they burn with 
love. No wonder that a man sits in his richened life, 
hardly knowing whether he is glad or sorry, awed and 
oppressed with the richness for which he has prayed, 
and which has been given to him in answer to his 
prayer. 

Does not such a truth as this, when it is understood 
and deeply felt, make men reject the privileges which 
bring such dangers with them ? Does it not make all 
conscientious and sin-fearing men seek a meager and 
restricted life, giving up much chance of goodness be- 
cause of the chance of being bad that must come with 
it? Happily it is not so. It seems, indeed, as if there 
were two kinds of fear, one ignoble and paralyzing, 
the other noble and stimulating ; and as if this fear of 
privilege were always trying, at least, to be of the noble 
sort. Sometimes it fails, and the men who see what 
danger privilege brings shrink from it altogether, and 
try to live the smallest life they can. But commonly 
the scale of men's construction is loftier than that. 
Commonly the man who is man enough to see this 



116 ASH WEDNESDAY. 

truth is man enougli to meet it. It fills him with a 
soberness which is energy and not despair. And be- 
sides, men see that it is a danger which they cannot 
shirk. To avoid privilege in order to escape the chance 
of sin which it brings witli it is essentially to commit 
the very sin of which we are afraid. For Peter to re- 
fuse to follow Jesus because he sees the denial looming 
in the distance is really only to anticipate his sin and 
to deny his Master now. 

And yet another truth comes in here. We talk about 
the dangerous privileges that may be given men in life. 
But really it is life itself which is the dangerous privi- 
lege. The chance to sin is wrapped up in the very fact 
that we are men. We could not have the lofty hopes 
of hea^^en without having, too, the haunting fear of hell. 
Here is the only real light we get upon the problem of 
evil. It is not conceivable that man should have the 
chance of being good without the other chance of being 
bad. But then it follows that no man can escape from 
privilege till he escapes from life. You may disown 
this or that special call that comes to you, and so seem 
to have escaped the danger of the special sins that 
were awaiting you down these special paths ; but still 
your human life remains. Still while you live you 
must be good or bad. And if you do the basest, 
meanest act that man is capable of, and by a cowardly 
suicide try to escape from life, still you have only con- 
densed your treason to your privileges into one miser- 
able deed. And who can say upon what strange yet 
familiar shore of the other world the disappointed sui- 
cide may find, to his dismay, that he has not escaped ; 
may be appalled to meet his old humanity, which death 



ASH WEDNESDAY. 117 

could not kiU, and have to take up for eternity the 
struggle from which no man can escape so long as he 
is man ? 

Here, then, is where our sins are born — deep in the 
bosom of oiir chances. How wonderful is the human 
nature which, in a world all filled with this truth, still, 
with its moral buoyancy, takes up its privileges with 
undying hope ! Wonderful is that ineradicable hero- 
ism of humanity wdiich makes clanger a necessary ele- 
ment of joy. The wisest men go out to life, not with 
depression, but with serious joy, bearing within them 
their consciousness of privilege, made critical, made 
pathetic, made even glorious, by their possibility of 
wickedness. 

2. I pass on to the next stage in the history of the 
sin of Peter. The scene is altered, yet the same ; still 
the Lake of Gennesaret, where the disciple answered to 
the Master's call. Only now, not the bright morning 
and the solid shore, but the dark night and the howling 
tempest out on the middle of the lake; the shore out 
of sight, and through the darkness the figure of Jesus 
walking on the water toward the frightened boat. 
Then Peter, when he knows that it is Jesus, starts to 
go to Him across the water. " But when he saw the 
wind boisterous, he was afraid ; and beginning to sink, 
he cried, saying, Lord, save me." Think of the man 
the moment afterward, when Jesus has taken him by 
the hand and held him up, and gently rebuked him for 
his faithlessness, and brought him into the boat again, 
and the wind has ceased and all is calm. See him sit- 
ting in silence and thoughtfulness. What has come to 
him? He has had warning of his tveahiess. He has 



118 ASH WEDNESDAY. 

seen that there are possible moments when his faith in 
his Master may give way. The chance of sin, which, 
as we saw, was involved in the very following of Jesns, 
has stood np vividly before him, and is the danger of sin. 
However afterward, in eager self-assertion, he may say, 
"Thongh all men shall be offended because of Thee, 
3^et will I never be offended," he never can say it with 
such perfect certainty as he could yesterday, or as he 
could the moment when he stepped down from the 
ship's side upon the water. That is what has come 
over him and made him thoughtful. Henceforth he 
never can be the perfectly buoyant Peter that he has 
been hitherto. He must always think differently of 
himself. He must always look on his Master's face 
with other eyes. He has caught sight of the possibility 
of denying Him. He has had warning of his coming 
sin. 

Such warnings come in the lives of all of us who 
have any thoughtfulness. Jusfc as before a great in- 
vention opens its full wonder on the world the brain 
of the inventor is haunted with visions of the coming 
moment in which the perplexed conditions shall all 
fall into their places and the destined miracle be born 5 
just as before some great act of self-sacrifice startles 
and delights the eyes of men the soul that is to do it 
feels in itself the movement of capacities for self-sur- 
render which it cannot really believe that it possesses, 
so the warning of the sin that is to tear one's life asun- 
der, the first dim thought that possibly the dreadful 
thing is possible, comes long before the sin is done. No 
sin is sudden. The warning may be only half recog- 
nized, but when the sin of our life comes, who of us 



ASH WEDNESDAY. 119 

has not felt, straiigety mingled with its strangeness, a 
certain dreadful familiarity, such as one might feel 
when a man whom he had never seen, but of whom he 
dreamed last night, and whose face he remembered 
from the dream, stepped in the living flesh across his 
threshold? Let me try to point out some few of the 
ways in which such warnings come to us ; though, 
indeed, this stage of a sin's history is so occult and 
subtle that no enumeration of special forms that it may 
take can do more than suggest its character. Some- 
times a man undertakes a task which he thinks is pure 
supererogation. He is not bound to do it. He might 
leave it undone and yet do all his duty. He thinks tha.t 
his real life is not staked upon this venture. Out of 
mere excess of moral vital ty he undertakes some moral 
feat, some piece of quixotic charity, some exercise of 
honesty beyond the strictest standards or most scrupu- 
lous scruples of the best men. That really was what 
Peter did when he offered the undemanded trust in 
Jesus of the walk upon the water. The man. fails in 
his self-appointed task. The extra strain upon his 
moral power is too great for him. He goes back to his 
assigned duty, his expected work. But he has touched 
the point of weakness. His strength no longer seems 
to him infinite, and thenceforth through his safest doing 
of his daily tasks must run the knowledge that there is 
a point where conscience will be too weak and resolu- 
tion will break down. The athlete who has recklessly 
tried to lift his five hundred pounds and failed has 
caught sight of the possible day when he shall fail to 
lift the two hundred which is so easy to him now. 
Or again, a man finds himself doing just the oppo- 



120 ASH WEDNESDAY. 

site of this. He catches himself questioning duty to 
see how little he can get along with and yet be dutiful. 
The man in business, spurning the very thought of 
cheating, as ready as he ever was to strike down any 
man who dared approach him with temptation, finds 
himself some day questioning duty and trying to make 
it say that it is not duty, or seeing how close he can 
run under the lee of a doubtful transaction and yet sail 
out safe. He has not sinned, but if he is a sensitive 
and thoughtful man he sees, as he opens his eyes to 
what he is doing, how he might sin. He shudders as a 
man might who, walking in his sleep, woke up and found 
that what he thought was music is the roaring in his 
ears of the chasm on whose brink he stands. His com- 
ing sin has given him its w^arning. 

Or yet again, a man here by my side does a sin 
whose very form my imagination has never pictured to 
itself. I expect to find myself all full of horror, but to 
my surprise a strange sort of sympathy takes possession 
of me instead. I expect to be filled with loathing for 
the wicked man, but instead of that I find myself for- 
getting him altogether, and deep unfamiliar questions 
about myself are stii-ring in my soul. Some bolt in the 
mysterious chambers of my self-consciousness has been 
pushed back. Not merely, that man is what I might 
have been ; that man is what I may he. The sin of 
which I stand in danger has given me its warning. 

Or once more, just the opposite of this may hap- 
pen. A pure, bright spirit who has been by my side 
suddenly leaves me. Some sudden call, to which its 
bright ambition instantly responds, lifts it out of the 
round of commonplace faithfulness, and it is doing 



ASH WEDNESDAY. 121 

some heroic, some angelic thing. I instinctively try to 
follow it. It is as if a bird and a beast that had been 
shut up forty days together in the ark, and had grown 
to be friends in the sympathy of that restricted life, 
were let loose together npon Ai*arat, and as the bird 
soared to the open sky that it was made for, the poor 
beast felt for the first time w^hat a heavy and clumsy 
beast it Avas. So the sight of the best things that the 
best men do, if it stirs me at all, shows me how near 
the limit of my powder I am living, how little margin I 
have, and the day when my strength shall fail even 
within its limits ; the warning of my coming sin grows 
up before me. 

These and a multitude of others like them are the 
times when the unborn sin stirs in the womb of the 
chance where it is hidden. It is like the gathering of 
a coming bankruptcy. The merchant wdll not own it 
even to himself, but when the day of his suspension 
comes it is not sudden. It is like the approach of 
death. The man assures himself, in spite of every 
sjTiiptom, that he is a well man still ; but w^lien you 
tell him he must die he is not surprised. You never 
did a sin that did not give its warning so to you before 
you did it. Perhaps you did not hear, but it was not 
that the warning bell did not ring. Perhaps you called 
that first sign of weakness a mere accident, and tried 
to believe that it meant nothing ; but if you gave your 
thought to it you knew it was not so. You linew it 
was the house's feeble timbers creaking before their 
fall. There are such warnings of coming sins that 
every one of us here has received — sins yet undone ; 
sins which, it may be, are to make our whole life dark 



122 ASH WEDNESDAY. 

some dciy, whose threatening we can read, if we are 
only wise enough, in. something that has come to ns 
ah-eady. Once you have drawn hack from d aty because 
it h)oked hard. It was only for a moment. The next 
instant you were on your feet again, and did the dut}/ 
bravely ; but it gave you a glimpse of the dreadful days 
of self-indulgent idleness and uselessness and moral 
degeneration that might come. Once you have trem- 
bled under some very zephyr of an evil passion. It 
vfas the first warning of the tempest of lust which may 
come howling about your purity some day. Once you 
coveted what was not yours, trembled just for a mo- 
ment on that high ground of calm content and happy 
honesty on which you stand. That moment you got a 
sight into the dark depths of a thief's life. Life is full 
of such warnings. No man grows to be more than a 
mere boy without learning on what side of his moral 
nature he will fall if he falls at all. Every one of us 
knows, who is in the least thoughtful, what sort of 
villain he would be if he grew villainous. Thank God, 
these warnings may save us from the things they warn 
us of. These blessed bells that ring out in the dark- 
ness may turn us resolutely off from the cruel surf that 
roars behind them. Peter may be all the more faithful 
when the great night of his Master's trial and his own 
shall come, because his faith once failed him on the 
lake. Only, such a strange, unreasonable mystery is 
this human nature, the bell that warns one man from 
his ruin may be the very fascination that drags another 
to his fate. There is a mysterious reversal of our whole 
moral machiner}^ which sometimes takes place, by which 
the more we are warned of the danger of a sin, and of 



ASH WEDNESDAY. 123 

the misery tliat it will bring, tlie more we liurry on to 
complete it and see it ont to its very worst. Oh, how 
our poor souls need to pray continually'^ " O Lord, not 
only send Thy warnings and gi\e us ears to hear them, 
but give us hearts to know how dreadful is the sin they 
prophesy " ! Xot merely intelligence — that never saved 
a man alone ; but a changed heart, which, like the heart 
of God, shall dread and hate a coming sin. 

3. But we must hasten on. And the next step brings 
us to what these first two stages have been foretelling. 
Again the scene is changed. But Peter and Jesus are 
still there, the sinner and his Lord ; as they have been in 
both the other scenes, so they are here. It is the high 
priest's palace. And as Peter stood there, a man '^ con- 
fidently affirmed, saying. Of a truth this fellow also was 
with Him : for he is a Galilean. And Peter said, Man, I 
knoAvnot what thou say est. . . . And the Lord turned, 
and looked upon Peter. . . . And Peter went out, and 
weptbitterh\" The deed is done ! the sin is committed ! 
How quick it was ! hovv^ simple ! Away back on that 
sweet morning by the lakeside it became possible. Here 
in th e grim hall of the high priest the thing is d one . How 
quick ! how simple ! The elements have met, and see ! 
the flame is burning. I doubt not the first feeling that 
a man has who has done a flagrant sin must be won- 
der at its wonderful simplicity. Is it possible that that 
little blow has killed the man ? Is it possible that be- 
tween ten o'clock and two minutes past ten I have be- 
come a thief f The Lord turns and looks upon Peter, 
and he knows that it is true. The look recalls the past, 
and all the preparation of the sin which is back there 
gathers up aronnd the present to assui'e him that it is 



124 ASH WEDNESDAY. 

really done. The voice of the Lord had called him 
across the waters of the lake. The hand of the Lord 
had caught him when he was just going to sink. Now 
the eye of the Lord sends all that past into his sonl 
and bears him witness with its piercing sorrow that the 
dreadfnl development is finished, and the sin that has 
been seeking birth so long is born at last. 

These two influences, I think, were in the look that 
Jesns cast on Peter. It recalled the past, so that the 
man became aware how far back the roots of this sin 
ran ; and it was full of present pain, so that he knew 
what a terrible critical thing it was that he had just 
done. These two things every sinner needs to know 
about the sin he has committed. All its -long prepara- 
tion must give it solemnity. It must seem to be not 
the sudden birth of. one bad moment, and jet the one 
bad moment must lose none of its conscious badness, 
its manifest responsibility, by the extension of the sin's 
history back into the past. Its long maturing must 
pour its seriousness into the final moment when the 
man at last chose whether he would crown the process 
with the conclusive word or fatal deed. Indeed., all life 
is made up of these two elements — long, silent growths 
and quick, decisive actions. The sacredness, the awful- 
ness of life lies in the two together. The soberness of 
life is kept hj the fact that nothing in the world is 
sudden. The intensity of life is kept by the fact that 
everything is sudden. In these two elements we have 
the fuU. consciousness of the man who has just done a 
sin and sits in his place and thinks of it.* At once his 
past life has reached out all its myriad arms, and seems 
to be holding him helpless, and out from the very 



ASH WEDNESDAY. 125 

ground at his feet a terrible power has sprung forth 
and seized him. His wliole habitual character and his 
single present will — both of them are wrong. He asks 
what he is to do, and he sees that it is not enough to 
repent of this one moment, as oue might pluck a single 
unaccountable weed out of his garden and go his way 
rejoicing that now his garden is all pure. He must re- 
pent of all the past. He must renew the very soil. He 
must struggle not merely with the circumstances that 
made this special sin, but with his whole sinful self. 
And yet here is this one special immediate sin standing 
black before his eyes, crying out hoarsely in his ears. 
Repentance is so vast, so thorough, as one sees it then. 
It is the casting of this one rebellious will upon the 
altar. It is the casting of the rebellions heart upon the 
altar, too. All this grows clear to the poor sinner as 
he sits with the fresh misery of his sin upon him, or as 
he turns and goes out from the high priest's hall. In 
one quick moment everything is altered. The great 
dark walls are there, the group about the fire, the ser- 
vants passing to and fro, the inner chamber with the 
eager accusers and their prisoner and the high priest 
— all that is there as it was a minute back; but every- 
thing is altered. The poor man's heart is broken. His 
past is all powerless. The present moment is trembling 
on the border of despair, for he has done his sin. 

4. Only one more scene remains to complete the his- 
tory, and we are taken back again from the great city 
to the quiet lake to find it. Jesus has been crucified, 
dead, and biiried, and He has risen from the dead, and 
now once more He stands on the same bank of the lake 
where He stood three years ago. Peter again, just as 



126 ASH WEDNESDAY'.:. ~ ^^ 

on that never-forgotten morning, is off on the water 
in his boat. Jesus calls to him again and tells him 
where the fish are to he canght. Peter is dazed and 
bewildered 5 but the moment that John, with his quicker 
insight, tells him that the stranger is their Lord he is 
in the water, and the next instant he is at the feet of 
Jesus, and Jesus by and by is telling him, in words in 
which, if there is any reproach, it makes the welcome 
only more sweet and gracious, of the work he is to do 
for Himx. Look at them there and say where is the sin 
that we have seen grow up between them, and that 
came to its completion on that dreadful night in the 
high priest's palace. You say, " It is forgiven ! " But 
was there ever set forth the simplicity, the marvelous 
simplicity, of forgiveness as it was set forth there f 
Where are the hard conditions with which men and 
churches have surrounded it ? There is no sign of pen- 
ance ; nay, there is not even confession. Peter does 
not even say, " I have sinned." He does not even de- 
clare his resolution, " I will sin no more." There he is, 
simply able to look up in the face of Jesus and say, 
^'Thou knowest that I love Thee," and waiting for the 
Lord to tell him what his work shall be. I think there 
is something nobly beautiful in Peters perfect confi- 
dence in Jesus. He kncAv Him so well. He kncAV that 
Jesus wanted that dreadful sin out of the way as much 
as he did. He knew that Jesus would not keep the sin 
there one moment after it might be forgiven, waiting 
for any kind of expiation or atonement. And so the 
moment that he had repented he knew that Jesus had 
forgiven, and he came, not with passionate prayers, as 
if he had to wring forgiveness from reluctant hands, 



ASH WEDNESDAY- 127 

but witli the overflowing joy of gratitude, and witli a 
heart leaping "witli desire to manifest its love. 

Ah, my friends, there is the tvue end of a sin. The 
true sign of forgiveness is not some mysterious signal 
waved from the sky ; not some obscure emotion hunted 
out in your "heart ; not some stray text culled out of 
your Bible ; certainly not some word of mortal priest 
telling you that your satisfaction is complete. The 
soul full of responsive love to Christ, and ready, long- 
ing, hungry to serve Him, is its own sign of forgiveness. 
Must there not be sorrow for sin? Can you picture 
this loving, waiting soul rejoicing in the memory of its 
wickedness, gloating upon its old unholy joy ? Must 
there not be resolution of amendment? Surely there 
must ; but do you want it in cold, hard words, or leap- 
ing in passionate desire of a new life fi-om the eager 
eyes ? Surely it is not sorrow^ for sin, for the sake of 
the sorrowfulness, that Jesus ever wants. He is no such 
cruel inquisitor as that. He wants sorrow for sin only 
that it may bring escape from sin ; and when the sor- 
row for sin which wept in the street outside the high 
priest's palace turns its other side and is joy in renew^ed 
devotion such as burst out confidingly by the lakeside, 
I am sure no Christ that we believe in can do anything 
but welcome it. I think that with all we know of the 
divine heart of Jesus He would far rather see a soul 
trust Him too much, if that is possible, than trust Him 
too little, which we know is possible enough. Wlien a 
man who has sinned, and who, like Simon Peter, has 
not a shadow or a ghost of an excuse to offer for his 
sin, has so known Christ that he never thinks of Him 
as one to be propitiated, never doubts for an instant 



128 ASH WEDNESDAY. 

that if he is forgivable he is forgiven, and so lets his 
hatred of his old sin break out in an utterance of his 
love for the Holy One, and lets his sorrow for his trea- 
son only show itself in his desire for loyal work, then 
that poor sinner s sin is dead and gone. When it Avent 
he may not be able to say. But here is the pure, clear 
air between him and his Lord. The sin is not in that. 
It must be dead and gone. 

And yet that is not wholly true. The sins Christ has 
forgiven are dead, but they are not gone. If none of 
the dead go from us, if when death comes a new and 
finer life begins, and he whom we call dead is with us 
in sweetest, subtlest portion of his life, with everything 
of harshness, every disagreement, every power of harm 
taken out, why may it not be so with our dead sins f 
It is so, surely ! There is a soul in them which lives 
on still while their body of wickedness has perished — 
a soul of patience, of watchfulness, of gratitude, and of 
never-dying love. O my dear friends, we have not done 
with a sin of ours, we have not finished its history, 
until, long, long after it has died in the kind forgive- 
ness of the Saviour, we have traced the eternal career 
of the spirit which its death has liberated into life, giv- 
ing steadfastness to duty, and charity to friendship, 
and unutterable tenderness to the love of the Saviour 
till eternity shall end. 

That is what our sins shall be to us forever. They 
die as sins in forgiveness that they may live forever as 
the impulses of holiness and the exhaustless fountains 
of love. The sin that never dies that death of forgive- 
ness lives on as sin. This is the difference of the sin 
of Judas and the sin of Peter. The sin of Judas sails 



ASH WEDNESDAY. 129 

right on to ever-growing sin, to ever-growing misery. 
The sin of Peter dies in pardon to live again in grateful 
love ; and he who has sinned and been forgiven finds 
in his new life with his Master the old life restored, bnt 
deepened and fiillilled. We leave by the lakeside him 
whom we found there, and the same Jesus is with him. 
But his knowledge and his love have been transfigured 
by all that has come in between. He is richer by the 
history of his sin. 

They say in England that as the wind blows on Ash 
Wednesday so it will blow the whole of Lent. Oh, if to- 
day our Lord would send us deep, true, simple thoughts 
of sin, making us see how the chance of it is bound up 
in our very manhood, how the warning of it sounds 
tln^ough all our life, how the doing of it is something 
on whose brink we are always walking,' and how the 
forgi^-eness of it is ready in the merciful hands ! Oh 
that all this might be with us so thoroughly to-day that 
these coming weeks might be filled to the brim with 
seriousness and thoughtf ulness and fear and hope ! 
Then, indeed, God's blessing should be upon our Lent. 
Oh, may He grant it, for Christ's sake ! 



IX. 
FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT. 

" Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be 
tempted of the de\dl." — ]\Iatt. iv. 1. 

The temptation of Jesus is certainly a very wonder- 
ful event. There is no incident in all His history on 
which the imagination may expend itself with a more 
lavish speculation ; and, on the other hand, there is 
none that comes nearer to practical life with stimulus 
and comfort. Christ, with His baptism just accom- 
phshed, went into the desert, and after He had fasted 
forty days and was become very hungr}^, the devil came 
to Him and tempted Him. The story is familiar to us 
aU. It is far too large to treat generally in a single 
sermon ; but, assuming a knowledge of the incident, I 
want to make a few suggestions to-day, first upon the 
fact, then upon the purpose, and then upon the metliod 
of our Lord's temptation. 

1. And first of all, how strange it seems to us some- 
times that there should be such a thing as temptation 
in the world at all ! However we explain it, whatever 
glimpses we get of its meaning, it must always be strange 
to us. Grod sends us into the world and hangs in tlie 
great distance before us certain lofty prizes — goodness, 
truth, purity — which He has made our hearts capable of 

130 



FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT. 131 

desiring. He starts us out toward those prizes. There 
they hang attracting us. Our souls really desire them. 
But we have not really started toward them before the 
presence of another power begins to show itself. Hands 
pluck at us to draw us out of the straight way. Voices 
call to us with enticements or with, threats to make us 
turn aside. A tempting figure lifts itself close beside 
our pathway. Once begun, that experience never ends. 
We never get rid of temptation. We give up one form 
of occupation and think to escape being tempted, and 
the same enticement to sin in some new shape intrudes 
itself right in the midst of our new task. No adoption 
of any strict rule of life, no separation of ourselves from 
a certain region of dangerous occupations, sets us free 
from the persecution of temptation. We are tempted 
to sin everywhei^. It is pathetic, almost terrible, to 
think how long this has been going on. Through all 
those weary years which it tii'es us to think of, they 
have been so many ; through all those monotonous gen- 
erations that we hear flowing on endlessly through the 
cavernous depths of history, as one listens to a stream 
dropping down monotonously forever underground; 
through all the years and generations of human life 
men have been tempted — not one that ever lived that 
did not meet this persistent, intrusive enticement to 
sin. It was not strange that some men learned to 
doubt of a God at all. It was not strange that other 
men came to believe that the world had two masters, 
almost equal rivals in power, and was divided between 
Grod and God's enemy. It is only strange that with 
this endlessly reiterated experience so man}' men were 
able to keej) on believing in one good almighty God. 



132 FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT. 

It shows liow dear and near that great belief lies to the 
human heart, that not even its own sharp, clear experi- 
ence can slip in between and separate them. 

And now what effect has this temptation of our Lord 
upon this strange universal experience of men f That 
which is strange and universal is apt to become unreal 
to men. They explain it away. They become deadened 
and deafened to it. And men in many ways have tried 
to get rid of this persistent, puzzling fact of a great, 
wide, evil influence in the world tr^dng to. allure men 
into sin. It is a mere form of education, they declare. 
It is a mere phase in man's upward growth. "It is not 
possible " — so runs the instinctive remonstrance of the 
heart — "it is not possible that every man, to come to 
Grod, must come through fire. It is not possible that 
every soul must walk the dizzy verge of sin and ruin 
before he comes to holiness and hfe. It would make 
the world too terrible." And then, with men saying 
and feeling that, there comes the incarnate Christ. 
Summing up humanity into Himself, He lives the 
human life, and lo ! right at the very gate of it He 
meets temptation. There stands the fact. I do not 
know that the temptation of Jesus makes one whit more 
plain the awful mystery of the presence and origin of 
sin. It does not tell us why that precipice of tempta- 
tion must skirt the human life. It does not tell us 
what the devil is. But it declares the fact of tempta- 
tion. It declares that there is a devil, and that all men 
must go through the danger of sin. All theoretical 
possibilities disappear before the convincingness of that 
sight. It is as if we had been studying our own pro- 
jection of the heavens in our library and said, " There 



FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT. 133 

can be no star just tliere, in that spot of the sky — there 
is no room for it there/' and then stepped ontside our 
door and looked up at the heavens, and there bui-ned 
the star that we said could not he, just in the very spot 
where we could see no room for it. So, if a man re- 
ceives the story of Christ being submitted to tempta- 
tion, all his own theories that Grod could not let His 
children be tempted must give way. Here is the Son 
of God, and to Him the devil finds free access. The 
fact stands plain to Him upon the old hill of Quaritania. 
The man who has seen Christ tempted will not deny 
temptation thenceforth. He will not be found explain- 
ing it away. He will not delude himself with vain 
hopes of escaping it and living a smooth, untempted 
life. He will read in the temptation of the perfect Life 
that that is impossible forever for any man. When he 
is depressed and hungry and exhausted, he will look 
for the devil as his Lord did, and when he sees him 
coming, when he hears his words and feels the desire 
of sin stirring in his heart, he will not say, " Oh, this is 
nothing but one stage of my growth." He will recog- 
nize the old enemy of his Master coming for the old 
battle, and gather up his strength and pray for his Mas- 
ter's strength in the hour of terrible, inevitable struggle. 
One other truth comes out from the very fact of our 
Lord's temptation. It is the truth of the real limits of 
sin. It makes us see where sin begins, and keeps us from 
thinking that to be sinful which is really innocent — 
an error which is hardly less dangerous sometimes than 
to think that innocent which is really sinful. It makes 
us see that temptation is not sin, nor does it necessarily 
involve sin. . Christ was sinless and yet tempted 5 there- 



134 FIRST SUNDAY IX LENT. 

fore it is possible for man to be tempted and yet sin- 
less. Now so many of us^ the moment we are strongly 
tempted, seem to fall into a sort of demoralized condi- 
tion, as if our innocence were over, as if the charm were 
broken and we were already sinners j and so we too 
often give ourselves up easily to the sin. A man goes 
on through his boyhood in the sweet purity of uncon- 
sciousness. What a heaven, what a very garden of 
Eden, as he looks back upon it out of the hot life that 
comes afterward, seems that quiet, untempted region 
lying cool between its four rivers, fresh from the crea- 
tive hand of God ! But by and by the lusts awoke. The 
time came when the things about him, which he had 
found pure while he looked on them with pure eyes, 
sent out a wholly new cliaracter, and began to entice 
and threaten and allure his soul to vice. To many men 
the first discovery of that capacity of being tempted by 
something which had been pure to them before is such 
a shock that it seems as if the sin were done already. 
The very power to be tempted seems to be a degrada- 
tion, and, losing our pride, our hope, our loyalty, our 
courage, we fall with a too terribly easy ease. It is as 
if a soldier, approached with a bribe and asked to be a 
traitor, should be so humiliated that any man should 
think him possibly capable of treason that he should 
seem to himself almost a traitor already, and so cross 
the line which seemed to him so narrow and become a 
traitor really. To any soul in such a state what could 
we say but this : " Look up and see the truth in Jesus ; 
do you not see it there ? To be tempted is not wicked, 
is not shameful, is not unworthy even of Him. It is 
the lot, in one view it is even the glory, of humanity. 



FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT. 135 

Sin does not begin and shame does not begin until the 
will gives way, until you yield to temptation. Stand 
guard over that will, resist temptation, and then to have 
been tempted shall be to you what it was to your Saviour 
— a glory and a crown, a part of your history worthy 
to be written with thanksgiving in the Book of Life, 
as His is written in iTis book of life." Is not this the 
strength and courage that main- a soul needs f 

If this be true, then any temptation through which a 
man may go without yielding is a glory and a strength. 
But this brings in another point. Shall men go on 
courting temptations, finding them out, and running 
into them^ so that they may come out glorious and 
strong ? Again, look at Christ's temptation. There is 
one phrase there which lights up the whole story. 
Chiisfc was "led up of the Spirit to be tempted of the 
devil." He had a certain work to do. That work was 
not His own, but was His Father's. His Father's Spirit 
guided Him and told Him how to do it. For some 
reason (who but that Spirit can say wholty what!) it 
was necessary in the doing of His work that He should 
meet the devil in the wilderness. Therefore the Spirit 
led Him there, and, fiUed with the Spirit all the time 
that He was there, by and by He came down safe and 
victorious. My dear friends, we too have a work, a 
duty. Our Father gives it to us as His Father gave 
His to Jesus. In doing our duty the Spirit of our 
Father may often lead us into temptation, but if He 
really leads us there He will protect us there. If He 
does not lead us, if we go of our own self-will, we have 
no pledge of His protection. We leave at the door the 
Guide whose company is safety. We have no more 



13G FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT. 

right^ then, to expect to be kept from sin tlian Jesns 
would have had to expect to be kept from death if a 
httle later, in His own self-will, He had really cast Him- 
self down off of the temple. Here is the trne distinc- 
tion. Every temptation into which God's Spirit leads 
yon you msij hope to conquer. Into every temptation 
which you enter of your own self-will you carry a weak- 
ness that already prophesies defeat. If your duty lies 
right by the gates of heU, walk there boldly, and the 
gates of hell sliaU not prevail against you. If your 
duty does not carry you there you cannot be too fastid- 
iously careful for your purity, to keep it out of the way 
of every lightest zephyr of temptation. Such is the 
manifest difference of the temptations into which Grod 
leads us and those into which we run ourselves. 

For God does lead us into temptation. Let us al- 
ways remember that that petition of the Lord's Prayer 
which anxious souls have prayed for centuries, "Lead 
us not into temptation," is always prayed just as that 
other one is prayed, " Give us this day our daily bread." 
Both are prayed with a clear sight of the possibility 
that God may see it best for higher purposes to do just 
the opposite — to cut off our daily bread, to break up the 
walls about us and lead us right into temptation. Both 
are prayed as aU prayers must be prayed — as loving, 
trusting, filial confidences, telling our Father what we 
wish that He would do, and begging Him just as much 
to do the opposite if He sees that we are wrong and 
that the opposite is better for us. 

2. So much we say of the mere fact of our Lord's 
temptation. But there is something more than this. 
We are almost compelled to ask what we can know 



FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT. 137 

about the imrpose of it. Why should the Saviour com- 
ing into the world have been subjected to these attacks 
of sin? Can we give any answer to that question? 
Not the whole answer, certainly ! We must know a 
great deal more of the mystery of the Incarnation than 
w^e know yet before we can open the heart of God and 
see the meaning of all the phases through which the 
incarnate Life was led. But something we can see. 
There are three suggestions as to how it came about 
that Christ was tempted, each of which has comfort 
and assurance in it for us who follow Him and are 
tempted too. The first thought is that the temptation 
was involved in the Incarnation — that it was necessary ; 
that it could not be avoided. That is purpose enough. 
If you meet a man in a steamer going to Europe, and 
ask him why he came to sea, he tells you what his busi- 
ness is in Europe — why he had to go there. The pur- 
pose of his going there is his purpose in crossing the 
sea. He could not do one without the other. And so 
we can well believe that the perfect holiness could not 
come into this wicked world to save us without coming 
to struggle with the sin of which the world is full. 
The Incarnation was a real incarnation. Christ did not 
play at being made man. Into everything that really 
belongs to humanity He perfectly entered. Only be- 
cause sin does not really belong to humanity, but is an 
intrusion, an excrescence, He did not enter into that. 
But on the human nature into which He did enter sin 
had seized, and when He came He found sin there and 
the fight was inevitable. Surely it gives us a deep idea 
of how thoroughly Christ was made man, of the humilia- 
tion which He undertook for us when He was made 



138 FIRST SUNDAY IX LENT. 

man, and of the inveteracy and universality of sin in 
our human life, when we think that the Incarnation 
w^s impossible mthout a temptation ; that Jesus could 
not come into the world without meeting the eneraj^ 
who claims the world for his own. If this is true, then 
the love that brought the Saviour to the world is reason 
enough for His temptations. But we can see other 
purposes which must have had something to do with it. 
It must have had something to do with the developing 
self -consciousness of Christ. It belongs to that group 
of events in what is the springtime of the life of Jesus, 
when His power and work were breaking its restraints 
and issuing into the summer of full activity. The 
springtime is always full of sweet tumult and mj^stery ; 
but its great idea, manifest everywhere, is education, the 
bringing forth of life. Now certainly Jesus was being 
educated there in the wilderness. When the devil said 
to Him, " Do this," and He, turning it over in His per- 
fect mind, saw that to do that would be to disown His 
Father, and so indignantly refused to do it, what was 
going on? The knowledge of His Father, the need, 
towering above all other needs, of honoring Him, the 
sense of His mission of struggle and victory, the need 
and glory of resting on His Father's strength — all these 
were growing strong in Him there. He was grasping 
and trTing the sword of the Spirit, ^^en He came 
down out of the wilderness He knew all these tilings by 
heart. He was holding the sword of the Spirit strongly 
in both hands. And then the other thought is this : 
that a part of the pui'pose of om- Lord's temptation 
must be in its power of example and influence for us. 
He was the leader of men into the new life, and so He 



FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT. 139 

must go tlie way tliat tliey would have to go. If man- 
kind were to be led home into the city of God, it might 
be by an angel flying overhead, clear above all the tops 
of the trees through which they had to force their way, 
out of sound of the roaring torrents they had got to 
cross ; or it might be by a Man walking before them, 
planting His feet first in the pathless ways where the 
serpents might be lurking, wetting His foot first in 
every cold stream that His followers would have to 
ford. Millions of men who would have lost sight of 
the angel will follow the fellow-man. He bears every 
difficult}' first, and many of the difficulties He takes 
away by bearing them, so that His followers do not 
have to bear tliem at all ; as he who walks first through 
a forest breaks down many a branch, so that his follow- 
ers easily tread underfoot what he has once for all cast 
down. This is the power of example and vicarious 
leadership in Christ's temptation. * 

What other purposes there may have been we cannot 
say, but we are very sure that these purposes were in 
that wonderful event ; it was inevitable ; it was part of 
Christ's education ; it was for the example and salva- 
tion of mankind. 

Aud now may we not take these same purposes and 
find them in any temptation into which God's Spiidt 
really leads any of our struggling souls ? You, my dear 
brother, are tempted terribly to do some wicked thing. 
Will it not help you if you can have some sort oj' an- 
swer to the question that is crowding on your heart : 
" Wh}^ does God let me be so tempted ? How is it pos- 
sible that He can let His child be so buffeted and enticed 
by sin ? " The answer comes from the manifest purposes 



140 FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT. 

of yonr Lord's temptation. It is inevitable for you, jnst 
as it was for Him. You cannofc be man and live a 
man's life without coming into this world where sin is 
and where you must be tried. He cannot save you 
from it without taking you out of manhood and lifting 
you into some superior life where all that is dear, as 
well as all that is dangerous, in this human life shall be 
left behind you. That is one reason. And the next is 
that you are being educated here. That great tempta- 
tion that comes swaggering up and frightening you so 
has got the best part of youi- character held under his 
brawny arm. You cannot get it without ^vi-estling with 
him and forcing it away from him. That mountain 
that towers up and defies you has got youi' spiiitual 
health away up on its snowy summit. That is what 
shines there in the sun. You cannot reach it except by 
the terrible climb. Ask yourself what you would have 
been if you had never been tempted, and own what a 
blessed thing the educating power of temptation is. 
And then the thii'd purpose comes in too. As Christ's 
temptation was vicarious, and when He conquered He 
conquered for others besides Himself, so it is Avith us. 
There are men and women all around us who have got 
to meet the same temptations that we are meeting. 
Will it help them or not to know that we have met 
them and conquered them f Will it help us or not to 
know that if we conquer the temptation we conquer not 
for ourselves only, but for them ? Will it help the mas- 
ter of a great business house or not to know that If he 
resists the temptation to cheat on a large scale it wiU 
help every clerk at the counter to resist his petty temp- 
tation to his little fraud ? Will it help a father to keep 



FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT. 141 

sober or not if he knows that in his victory over drink 
his son's victory becomes easier f The vicarionsness of 
all life ! There is not one of ns who has not some one 
more or less remotely fastened to his acts, concerning 
whom he may say, as Christ said, ''For theii- sakes I 
sanctify myself." 

These are the purposes of temptation. Let a man 
feel them, and they take all whine out of him and put 
all manhness into him. Let a man feel them all, and 
then, as temptation comes, he gives it a brave and hum- 
ble welcome. " Come on," he says. " I am going to be 
tempted. I am going to meet the inevitable necessity 
of my manhood. I am going to meet the chance of 
being a better man. I am going into a dark, rough path, 
which, if I walk it well, shall be smoother and brighter 
for other men who are to walk it afterward." Can you 
conceive of a man meeting temptation so manfully as 
that and not conquering it ? And remember, it is only 
into the temptations where it is at least possible for 
these purposes to be fulfilled that the Spirit of God ever 
leads a man, or a man ever has a right to go. Is there 
not here a practical rule ? What a line it draws ! That 
man who seeks the drinking-shop of his own free will 
is going neither by a necessity of his manhood, nor for 
education, nor for example to others. He has no busi- 
ness there. It is not God's Spirit that is leading him. 
That young boy who went out of the pure atmosi3liere 
of a carefully guarded home into the corruption of the 
reghnent and the camp went because he could not stay 
away and be a man ; because there was the chance there 
to be made purer : because if he were pure there other 
men around him would be pure too, by his puiity. It 



142 FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT. 

was God's Spirit that called him out to be tempted of 
the devil. So may we always test our temptations. 

8. And now that w^e have spoken of the fact and pur- 
pose of our Lord's temptation, let us say a few words 
about its method. This takes us a little more into detail, 
and obliges us to recall the three dlficerent approaches 
that the evil spirit made to Chiist. We can say only a 
w^ord on each. I hope you remember the stoiy well 
enough to follow me. The first temptation is told thus. 
Remember He was all worn out and hungry. "And when 
the tempter came to Him, he said, If Thou be the Son of 
God, command that these stones be made bread. But 
He answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live 
by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out 
of the mouth of God." Now see what that temptation 
was. It appealed to the healthy senses of man. It 
said, " You need food. God made food for you. God 
gave 3^ou the power to make it for yourself. Now use 
your power and fulfil God's wiU." And there was the 
hunger gnawing all the while and saying "Amen" to 
the devil's words. Jesus knew that bread was good. 
When He was made man He was made to need bread 
just like the humblest and most degraded being who 
wore a human body. There was nothing low in the de- 
sire. Man was made to live by bread ; only — and here 
comes in Christ's noble sword of the Spirit, cutting the 
knot of the specious temptation right in two — only, 
man was not made to live by bread alone. God gives 
him bread to live by ; but when the Giver of the bread 
puts out His hand upon the loaf and says, " Stop ! Noav 
there is a higher life than that which is fed by the tast- 
ing of bread, and that is fed by the not tasting it " j 



FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT. 143 

when He who gave the body its food takes that away iu 
order to feed the soiil, and sends hunger because only 
by hunger can come truth, what shall he sa,y but this : 
'' Man shall not live by bread alone, so I shall not won- 
der even when He takes the bread away, nor dare nor 
wish to interfere " f 

So far from thinking it strange that Christ should 
have felt the pangs of hunger and the craving after 
food, I cannot but believe, believing, as I do, in His 
perfect humanity, that food had a healthy beauty and 
delight for Him just in proportion to His perfectness. 
I believe that there was never a man in whom every 
keen appetite of human life was so alert and strong. I 
believe that to His ejes, the blue skies were bluer and 
the green carpet of the earth greener than any duller 
eyes have ever seen them.. His ears heard something 
in the insect's chirp and the bird's song that no other 
ears have ever caught. No other man has known the 
wind so fresh, the flower so fragrant, or the sun so 
bright. The beauty of the world and the joy of living 
in it have never come so near to any senses as they 
poured themselves into the perfect perceptions of the 
Man of Nazareth. And so we can know nothing of the 
degree of that temptation which He conquered when He 
said, "Yes, they are all good and beautiful, but they 
must all break away to let down on Me what is worth 
them all — -one clear utterance of the will of God : 
' Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word 
that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.' " 

Do you not see what the temptation was and what it 
is forever? O my dear friend, God made these things, 
and made you to live by them, but not by them alone. 



144 FIRST SUNDAY IX LENT. 

Go on ; gather the joy out of the earth and sky, out of 
the bread He gives you power to win, out of the water 
that He makes to gush at youi* feet 5 only, when the 
time comes — as it is sure to come some time, as per- 
haps it is to come now — when, in order to speak some 
word out of His mouth to you, some word of duty or 
charity or hohness, He takes these things away, and 
you are tempted to shut your ear to His word in order 
that you may keep these pleasant things, then jou are 
just where Jesus was — the devil is at your ear. May 
God help you to see what Jesus saw — what He said 
afterward, perhaps remembering His own temptation : 
'' The life is more than meat." May He help you to say, 
^^ No ! Nothing — not even His gifts — shall blind or 
deafen me to Him. Man shall not live by bread alone, 
but by every word out of the mouth of God^ — the 
blessed sacrifice cf sense to spirit. 

What was the next temptation ? St. Matthew tells it 
as simply as he told the first : " Then the de\nl taketh 
Him up into the Holy City, and setteth Him on a pin- 
nacle of the temple, and saith unto Him, If Thou be the 
Son of God, cast Thyself down: for it is wiitten, He 
shall give His angels charge concerning Thee : and in 
then- hands they shall bear Thee up, lest at any time 
Thou dash Thy foot against a stone." And Jesus an- 
swered, " It is written again, Thou shall not tempt the 
Lord thy God." The exact natm-e of the transaction 
need not concern us now. History or parable, its 
lesson is the same. And what is it ? " If Thou be the 
Son of God, cast ThyseK down." The appeal is made 
to the deepest self-knowledge of Jesus. He knew that 
He was the Son of God. Just before He came into the 



FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT. •l45 

wilderness, at His baptism, His Father had claimed 
Him from the opened sky, saying, " This is My beloved 
8on ! " and we cannot tell what memories and sym- 
pathies, what a flood of self -witness, that voice stirred 
in the soul of the di\dne Lord, jnst becoming conscious 
of His own divinity. He knew that He was God's Son, 
and yet here He seemed deserted and shut out and lost. 
He could not recognize or find His Father. That must 
have been a pain to Him to which the hunger of the 
body was nothing, that hunger of the soul And then 
the devil says, '^ Prove your Sonship ; find your Father, 
force Him to own you by flinging yom'self into a dan- 
ger from which He must save you." It was an appeal 
to the spiritual nature — a more trying temptation to 
a more sensitive part of the being than before. And 
Avliat does Jesus say f How calm His answer is ! " No ! 
I must not tempt the Lord My God. I am His Son. I 
know it even when I seem most deserted. It is not 
Mine to dictate how He shall show His Fatherhood- It 
is not Mine to create difficulties just that His fatherly 
care ma}^ conquer them. Let Me wait, and in His own 
good time and way He will show Himself to Me more 
clearly than if His hand caught Me half-way between 
the pinnacle and the pavement.-' Do we know any- 
thing about that temptation ? Does any such enticing 
whisper ever creep into our ears ? '^ I am a Christian, 
and so Christ must keep me, and I can go here and be 
safe, I can walk through that mire and not be defiled, I 
can walk through that fire and not be burned. I am a 
Christian — Christ holds me in the hands of His super- 
natural grace ; and so the natural care and caution, the 
watchfulness over my actions, is less necessary to me.'' 



146* FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT. 

Do we know anything of that spirit? If ever onr 
religion has weakened onr moral vigor instead (;f 
strengthening it^ if ever we have forgotten that we are 
made ChristianSj not that we may be freed from any 
responsibilities, but that we may take every responsibil- 
ity more steadily on shoulders made strong for it by 
the strength of Christ j if ever in any way the thonght 
of spiritual privilege has tried to draw ns away from 
the everlasting, central thought of duty, the absolute 
necessity of watchfulness and faithfulness 5 if ever, in 
order to realize God more completely, you have been 
tempted to go out of the path of simple duty where He 
has set you, it has been Christ's temptation over again. 

I hope you see how much harder this temptation is 
than the other. Strange how as a man grows more 
spiritual he meets new dangers that he never knew 
when he was carnal. The higher man attains higher 
temptations. The climber on the Alps meets dangers 
up among the clouds that men and women in the val- 
leys never know. To hunger for bread is terrible, and 
may drive a man to great wickedness ; but to hunger 
for a God who seems to refuse Himself is infinitely 
more terrible, and may drive to wickedness far more 
intense the soul that cannot wait in trust till God shall 
claim the child whom He has not forgotten for an in- 
stant, in His own way. 

Of the third temptation we can allow ourselves but a 
single word : " Again, the devil taketh Him up into an 
exceeding high mountain, and showeth Him all the 
kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; and 
saith unto Him, All these things will I give Thee, if 
Thou wilt fall down and worship me." And was that 



FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT. 147 

a temptation? Did Jesus want those kingdoms and 
theii- glory? Surely He did. Not for themselves, not 
for the comforts they could furnish Hiiu, not with tlie 
ordinary covetousness of avaricious men, but yet He 
wanted them intensely. He had come to win them, He 
liad come to purchase them mth His own blood. He 
stood with His heart full of blessings, and the world 
would not take them. He wanted that world that He 
might pour His blessings in upon it. And here stood 
the devil and said, " Once bow the knee to me and it is 
all yours. Do one wi*ong thing and all those great 
diviue longings of yours shall have free course, and 
you shall do for this stubborn world all that you want 
to do ! " Ah, you and I must know how Jesus longed 
to bless men before we can have any idea what that 
temptation was to Him; but if you have ever had a 
friend whom with the purest sympathy and love you 
longed to bless and help, who shut himself up against 
you ; and if the time has come when you have seen, or 
thought that you have seen, just how, by one wrong 
act, by one concession to his standards, by one compli- 
ance, 3^ou could ^-et the access to him tliat you wanted ; 
if then all your love for him has poured in its influence 
to make you do that one wrong thing, then you know 
of what sort this last temptation of our Saviour was. 
And it is the most terrible temptation that any man 
can feel. It burns its way into the life with all the fire 
of our warmest love. How it touched Jesus to the 
quick we can see in the intensity of the indignation 
with which He turned against it. ''Get thee hence, 
Satan," He cries out. This temptation had come nearer 
to His heart than either of the others. 



148 FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT. 

Again we see how as a man becomes higher he be- 
comes capable of higher temptations. Of these three 
temptations of Jesus the first appealed to His bodily 
appetites, the second to His need of His Father, the 
third to His love of His brethren. To be tempted in 
the fii'st way one must merely be a man ; to be tempted 
in the second way one must crave for himself the life 
with Grod ; but to be tempted in the third way one must 
have passed beyond himself and long for the highest 
blessings of his fellow-men. None but the Christ-like 
man can know what it is to be tempted like Christ. 

Does that seem hard? Does it open a dreary pros- 
pect to know that as you grow higher and higher, while 
you leave many temptations below you, you will be 
always meeting new ones in the upper au* I But if it 
be so that this world is all tuned and tempered with 
temptation, if the life cannot live without it here any 
more than the lungs can breathe without oxj'gen in the 
air, then may we not be thankful that there is no moun- 
tain-top whose atmosphere is so thin as to lack this ever 
necessary element of life, and so there is no mountain 
that we may not climb ? There will come a world where 
there will be no temptation — a garden with no serpent, 
a city with no sin. Tlie harvest day will come and the 
wheat be gathered safe into the Master's barn. It will 
be very sweet and glorious. Our tired hearts rest on 
the promises with peaceful delight. But that time is 
not yet. Here are our tempted lives, and here, right 
in the midst of us, stands our tempted Saviour. If we 
are men we shall meet temptation as He met it, in the 
strength of the God who is the Father of whom all men 
are children. Every temptation that attacks us attacked 



FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT. 149 

Him and was conquered. We are fighting witli a de- 
feated eneni}^ We are struggling for a victory wliicli 
is already won. That may be our strength and assur- 
ance as we recall, whenever our struggle becomes hot- 
test and most trying, the wonderful and blessed day 
when Jesus was " led up of the Spirit into the wilder- 
ness to be tempted of the devil." 



X. 
SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT. 

" It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every 
word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." — Matt. iv. 4. 

A QUOTATION by Christ of the words of the Old Tes- 
tament has a great value apart from the common use 
which is made of such passages in connection with the 
evidences of the Bible. The Old Testament — it is very 
necessary that we should always feel it — is on a far 
lower plane of life than the New. That was the pre- 
paratory, this is the perfect book. In that man was 
working under God's guidance; in this God works 
directly, taking His place among men in the person of 
His Son, teaching by His own audible word*, guiding 
by His own visible hand. When Christ, then, quotes 
from the Old Testament, when He takes the words that 
were spoken of some of the men of old and uses them 
of Himself, He is reaUy asserting the intimate connec- 
tion, the identity of life, between the lower and the 
higher, the human and the divine, planes of being. He 
is declaring that what is true of one in an inferior is true 
of the other in a superior degree. He is extending the 
conditions of humanity and showing how they repre- 
sent and echo the conditions of Divinity. Every one 
of these lines of quotation running between the Testa- 
ments — what is it but one of a multitude of golden 

150 



SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT. 151 

cliords which hold the life of God not merely into a 
connection of relationship, but into a connection of re- 
semblance with the life of man, who is His creature and 
His copy ? All together, what are they but a new as- 
surance of that truth whose supreme revelation was 
given us by the manifestation of the Divine-human in 
the Incarnation of our Redeemer? 

I find this truth, which makes so much of the life of 
my Bible, peculiarly evident in the words from which 
I am to speak to you to-day. Christ was in the midst 
of His mysterious temptation. The tempter had tried 
upon His weary and exhausted nature one resource of 
devilish cunning after another. At last came this ap- 
peal : '' If Thou be the Son of God, command that these 
stones be made bread." It was the very magnificence 
of effrontery, it was part of the same superb impiety 
which once in heaven had counted God's authority 
capable of overthrow, which thus tried to derange the 
calmness of divine consistency by an appeal to the low 
necessity of hunger. We read the chapter so often 
that we do nt>t realize how strange Christ's answer is ; 
but if we had stood there and heard the Satanic demand 
made we should have waited, stopping our breath to 
hear some supreme assertion of the Godhood that re- 
pelled so low an insult. " Go to men," we should have 
listened for the Lord to say — " go to men with argu- 
ments like those. Their natures are built to answer 
such appeals. All that a man hath will he give for that 
life which bread must feed. But God must be tempted, 
O tempter, with higher trials than that. Do not bring 
to the Divine those inducements whicli entice qTily the 
human." 



152 SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT. 

I love Christ all the more when I see how different 
His answer was from that. I love Him when I see Him 
declare Himself a man, and from the hnman standpoint 
fling aside the tempter's plea. I reverence and cling 
to the trne hnman natnre that there was in Him when 
I hear Him go back and take np the words that had 
been on hnman lips, that declared the resources of hn- 
man natnre, that asserted the higher life in Man : " It 
is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by 
every word that proceedeth ont of the month of God.'' 
The danger is to ns who hold so much to the divinity 
of Christ that His humanity will mean too little. Let 
ns remember that in times snch as this of the tempta- 
tion there is a strength for ns in the thonght that it 
was a man who fonght and conquered, which no simple 
assurance of His being God could give. 

The subject that these w^ords of Christ include, then, 
and of which we are now to speak, is the requirements 
of life in man. "Man shall not live by bread alone, 
but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of 
God." 

What is it in the highest sense to do what all men 
try to do in some sense, to get a living ? Those words 
are very lightly used, and narrowed down to very insig- 
nificant dimensions. In their largest employment they 
include all the maturest culture and best growth of the 
human body, mind, and soul. 

'• Man doth not Uve ! " Before the thought of life all 
treatment practical, as well as speculative, stands defied 
and puzzled. Just as the surgeon's knife lays skin and 
flesh a«ide, dissects the mystery of every vital organ, 
hunts being back into its most sacred citadel, and finds 



SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT. 153 

it there elude him — finds everywhere the machinery of 
life, nowhere life itself ; just as the metaphysician lays 
an anthoritative hand on thought, emotion, will, and 
bids them stand befoi'e him and declare the secrets of 
their operation, but no profoundest searcher has yet 
found what mystery it is by which the being lives who 
thinks and loves and wills so wonderfully, so to the 
teacher of the proper conduct and true results of life, 
that life itself always abides behind his work, wrapped 
in an eternal mystery which is only typified by the un- 
broken reserve with which the great eai'tli clothes her 
white fields for our eating and pours out rivers for our 
drinking, but lets us know nothing of the untold nature 
out of which the springs and the corn-fields come. Or 
again, the thought of life is like that untouched line we 
call the sky, which sweeps around us the clear circle of 
its horizon, from which we measure with a perfect ac- 
curacy, and builds above us a blue dome under which 
our life goes on protected and assured, but which, when 
we try to reach it, proves to be not one single line, but 
an infinite depth, heaven beyond heaven stored with 
what strange uses and benefactions we dare not say. 
So is it not true that the idea of life is realized thus 
only as it exists in degrees infinitely deep, taking sharp 
lines for practical uses, just as the atmosphere does in 
the distinct outlines of the sky ? 

At any rate, no one can doubt that this word "life " 
means very different things for different people and at 
different times. Life, first of all, is that about this 
pliyskal structure by which it is kept active ; it is that 
unfound sometlnDg by which this heart beats on from 
the baby's first cry to the veteran's last prayer ; by which 



154 SECOND SL^^DAY IN LENT. 

tlie red blood runs its silent errand and all the forces 
of wMcli the physiologist gives you the names are kept 
in operation. And again, life means something more 
when the purposes of beating hearts and tireless blood 
are taken into account. Every result to which this 
living man may minister is included under this great 
word. Intellectual life we speak of — the thinkin g, know- 
ing, learning^ inventive faculties in all the cii'cle of their 
operations ; this constitutes the second circle of the great 
whole of life. And outside of that, above it, larger than 
it, what we call moral life, the powers of choice and 
duty, involving the whole social or related being, the 
emotional existence, with the complications it involves 
— every part of human nature which leads to and re- 
sults in an ought or an ought not ; this is the third zone 
in the great atmosphere of being. And beyond all 
these, the outermost of all, highest of all, most infinite, 
bounding most closely on the life of God, man's spirit- 
ual life, whereby his nature is in connection, through 
its distinctively religious faculties, with the nature that 
is supernatural and divine. 

Now the true thought of life includes all four of 
these ; not any one or two or three of them, but all 
four. Breathing is not life, thought is not life, duty is 
not life. The perfect life includes them all. No man 
is thoroughly, that is, tlirough and through, alive unless 
from end to end of his capacity that capacity is full. 
Complete life involves the conception of a body with 
every power perfect, a mind with every ability active, 
a conscience that never swerves from purity, a spirit 
that reaches to and fastens itself on God. Everything 
short of that is stagnated, impeded, partial life. To 



SECOND SUNDAY IX LENT. 155 

complete that high result is what a man ought to mean 
when he talks about " getting a living.'' Is it not one 
of the mortifying things, dear friends, to take now and 
then these words that we are using every day so hghtly 
and see how much they really mean 5 to wipe through 
the dust and rust that are on these coin-words, which 
constant friction has worn so smooth aud unimpressive, 
and look upon the royal image and superscription that 
is on them f 

Now we are obliged to keep this thought of life com- 
plete in all its parts if we want to understand our text. 
We want to fill ourselves full of this idea of what it is 
to live, and then we are prepared to read : " Man shall 
not live by bread alone, but by every word that pro- 
ceedeth out of the mouth of God." With a sublime 
figure man is represented as feeding on the words of 
God, and every word of God must come for nurtiu-e to 
the life that is made up of many parts. How splendid 
the figure is ! God stands upon the summit of His na- 
ture and speaks His words, which in the absoluteness 
of His power turn themselves at ouce to deeds and 
blessings. He speaks once : " Let the earth bring forth 
grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit-tree yield- 
ing fruit." And as He spoke, those words, "proceed- 
ing out of the mouth of the Lord," were caught by the 
quick, obedient ground of Genesis, and became the 
power by which the physical life of man in all his gen- 
erations has been nourished. He speaks again, in that 
vast voice which utters itself through all of natare and 
of human history : " Let man be wise, let him learn, 
let him know," and all that endless word of God has 
been the food of man's intellectual craving since the 



156 , SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT. 

first student rejoiced in the fii'st truth. Again, He 
speaks out of some Sinai mountain, or out of that Sinai 
of the inner life, our conscience. "Do this," He says, 
'•' and live," laying down duty after duty, which the 
moral natui-e takes to itself and feeds upon, and grows 
by them into rectitude and strength. And then, last 
of all, to the highest life of all. He utters His sublimest 
voice. What shall we say that last word is by which 
He utters Himself to, on which He feeds, man's deep 
religious nature! What can it be but that eternal 
"Word" which was in the beginning with Grod, which 
was God, wliich was made flesh, and dwelt among us ; 
that bread of life which came down from heaven, of 
which a man may ea,t and never die ; the fullness of 
divine utterance in the world's Saviour, Jesus Christ ? 

This is the impressive figure of human nature feed- 
ing on the words of God. Its truth is simply an an- 
nouncement of the vast and various demands of human 
life ; of the needs of man, and of the special pro\dsions 
— by providence, by wisdom, by duty, and by grace — 
which God has made that no one of those needs should 
go unmet. 

What have we reached, then? We have seen that 
human life exists by God's decree in various depart- 
ments or degrees, and that He has made specific provi- 
sion for the support of each one of these kinds of 
human being. If this be so, then it is evident that each 
life needs and must have its own peculiar nourishment 5 
that the Life of one of the lower natures that belong to 
man can never supply the lack of hfe in a higher. Ko 
man grows wiser by simpty growing physically stronger. 
Any magnificent ruffian out of a street mob, with his 



SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT. 157 

splendid streiigtli of bod}^ and liis wretched emptiness 
of brain, will prove you that. And no man grows good 
by mere increase of intellectual development. Look 
at the melancholy record of the private lives of many 
of the most brilliant thinkers and scholars. Look at 
the dissoluteness of the bad, bright times of Greek or 
Koman culture. And just exactly so no man reaches 
any high progress in the highest life, no man grows 
holy, except by the one single means which Grod has 
provided for bringing a world of sinners back to Him- 
self and lifting them up out of their unspirituality into 
the holiness in which He Himself resides. As power- 
less as is the mere training of the body to educate the 
mind, or the culture of the mind to reform the morals, 
so utterly hopeless is it that any man living uuder 
God's inevitable laws should grow by the mere struggle 
of moral rectitude into that condition of resemblance 
and spn-itual nearness to God which we mean when we 
speak of a man's being holy. That high estate, the 
abiding of the divine life in the human soul — you must 
set it down as the first truth of your religion — can be 
ever reached only by the personal acceptance of that 
means by which it was first and forever typified — the 
indwelling of the Divine in the human in the great rep- 
resentative miracle of spiritual history, the Incarnation 
of Jesus Christ. That Incarnation is to be the image 
of every man's highest life. As there in Bethlehem so 
constantly in us the higher life can take possession of 
the lower only by a miracle, only by the direct opera- 
tion of the Holy Spirit of the Lord : '•' Not of blood, nor 
of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of 
God." As in the Christ so constanth^ in us the higher 



158 SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT. 

life, once present, takes the lower utterly nnder its con- 
trol, wields it with a supreme despotism for its own 
uses. As in the Christ so constantly in us the lower 
life has to meet all dangers and all agonies — the hunger, 
the thii'st, the weariness, aye, even the scoui-ging and the 
cross — when the purposes of the higher call for it ; for 
this new life into which he enters who is " born again," 
though just as intimately and wonderfully connected 
with the old physical and intellectual life which the man 
lived before he was converted, is just as distinct from 
it, just as distinctly superior to it, as was the divine 
natui^e to the human nature in our Lord. 

I do not forget, when I thus speak of the spiiitual 
life, wherever a man attains it, as surpassing and sub- 
jecting all inferior hves within him, that nevertheless 
those inferior hves are necessary to make him a perfect 
man. I believe most fully that a man will be a better 
Christian if his body is healthy and his mind is wise 
and his morals are correct. It certainly is true about 
the body. Take two spirits equally pure and holy, and 
lodge one in the frame of a strong man whose full 
blood is only waiting for some high impulse to do 
heroic acts, and house the other in some poor, broken- 
down body that vexes and restrains its high inhabi- 
tant vnth useless limbs and the weariness of everlasting 
aches, and there is no doubt that the development of 
the former will be into a more robust and hearty piet}^ 
than the sickly growth of the other ever can attain. I 
believe in muscular Christianity as far as that. And I 
believe we ought to know more about and think more 
about the necessity of a perfect body to a perfect man. 
If by any means a man can help it he has religiously 



SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT. 159 

no right to be dyspeptic or deformed. Here the phy- 
sician becomes an evangelist with a most specific and 
responsible work to do. And jnst so about the mind ; 
the time is gone by when men talked as if ignorance and 
w^ant of cnltnre were necessary prerequisites to pietyo 
As Christianity advances all that false idea must and 
will be more and more utterly abandoned, and the 
larger doctrine take its place that all truth is God's 
truth, and that every triitli a man can learn, no matter 
how far off it seems, down to the natural history of in- 
sects and the rule of three, may by some divine con- 
nection minister to his growth in spiritual grace. And 
another day has gone by, too — the day in which men 
used to defame morality for the sake of building up 
religion. As the distinctive character of true religion 
rises we see it builds itseif infinitely past our ken with- 
out degrading any other culture. I will not say, as you 
often hear it said so paradoxically, that an immoral man 
is easier to convert than a moral man. Conversion is 
so hard and so easy a thing at once — so infinitely hard 
for us, so infinitely easy for the Spirit of God — that I 
do not believe we can tell much about which are the 
hardest and which are the easiest conversions. But I 
cannot feel a doubt that of two men, one moral and one 
immoral, the man who takes Christ into a hfe in any 
degi'ee correct grows more rapidly in tlie spirit of his 
Master than another who takes him hito a house which 
is not merely foul within, but broken down and run- 
ning over with its foulness at every loathsome chink. 

No ! I accept all this. I cannot help it. When I see 
rehgion every day hampered by weak bodies, narrow 
minds, and wicked habits, all of them defects originat- 



160 SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT. 

iiig before the man became religious, I am perfectly sure 
that man's religion wo aid be truer in its expressions, 
and so freer for its growth, if all those lower lives 
were perfect. The}" minister to this the liighest life of 
all. But again we must insist that they do not, they 
never can, create it. By none of them does the man live. 
There is a higher life above them, which they can help, 
but into which they cannot grow, into which whosoever 
entereth must be " born again." Always I long to see 
those lives perfecting, each feeding on its own appropri- 
ated " word of Grod." I rejoice in ev^ery body strength- 
ened, every mind enlightened, every fault reformed; 
but always above them I hear a higher word, the 
Word of God Himself, the Christ, the Saviour, and I do 
not know how to count any man truly living till he has 
come and found the life that is in Him. 

I speak to you to-day who have not learned how 
grand and precious is this truth of the superior nature 
of the spiritual life. Why can ye not learn that religion 
is a distinct attainment and demands a distinct method 
of its own ? To be religious, to be a Christian, means 
something accurate and specific. It is not to be a little 
stronger than the strongest, a httle wiser than the 
wisest, a little truer than the truest. It is something 
more. It is something different from all. It is to have 
taken up a new quality of being, which God only gives 
through Jesus Christ ; to have learned ambitions which 
the best wisdom or morality never dreamed of ; to have 
become the subject of forces deeper, dealing with pro- 
founder regions of the nature, than were ever stirred 
before — all this accomplished by the act and habit of 
complete personal dedication, under the impulse of 



SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT. 161 

gratitude and love, to the service and education of a 
personal Master and Saviour, Jesus Christ oui* Lord. 
Let a plant try to be a bird forever and it will forever 
fail. It may grow to be a very superior plant, unfold 
a lordl}^ beauty to the wondering sun, but between it 
and tlie song and the flight and the nest lies forever 
the gulf that separates flower-life from bird-life and 
never can be crossed. Let a man try to be a Christian 
forever. The struggle may make him, I believe it will 
make him, a better man ; but between him and the 
strength and the peace and the love yawns forever the 
gulf that separates man-life from God-life, and which 
no man ever yet crossed save as he stretched out both 
his helpless hands to God and felt a Hand too powerful 
not to trust clasp them and lift him, whither he knew 
not, till lo ! the gulf was crossed and he had entered on 
the new life that they live who live in God. 

Do I need to tell you the uses to which this truth of 
the subordination of the lower lives to the higher may 
be and has again and again been put ? What a strength 
there is in it for every tempted man who has to put some 
low good aside that he may go on to the better! It is 
the law of self-sacrifice, and so must be the law of every 
worthy life. By it the martyrs stood while the flames 
burned away tlieii' outer life and pm-ified and made 
manifest at once the inner truth which was more dear 
to them. By it reformers since the world began have 
given up the hope of popular favor and worked for 
thankless generations that did them but a grudged 
honor years after they were dead, over their moldering 
bones. By it the nation that God blesses has to learn 
in God's good time how to rise up from her careless ease 



162 SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT. 

and pnt lier easy prosperity away, that by toilsomeness 
and blood she may mount to the higher mercies of 
completer freedom and a profounder loyalty. "Man 
shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that 
proceedeth ont of the month of God " — by every word, 
from the gentlest to the severest, that the eternal lips 
know how to speak; from the tenderness of the God 
that spoke to Hagar : " What aileth thee, Hagar ? fear 
not," to the sternness of the pitiless God who spoke to 
Abraham : " Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, 
whom tlion lovest, and offer him npon one of the moun- 
tains which I will tell thee of." Blessed is the state,, the 
chnrch, or the heroic man that is strong enough to put 
the bread away Avithout a mui'mui', no matter how sweet 
it be to his hungry lips, if by tasting it he robs himself 
of any nourishment for the higher life that feeds, not 
upon bread alone, but upon every word of God. 

And remember this is not a doctrine for the world's 
heroes and martp's only; it is for every living soul 
when it is called on to give up the lower that it may 
attain the higher life. It is for the man who has to give 
up his dollar that he may keep his honesty, to give up 
a doubt that he may win a truth. It is for the young 
man who has to give up a fascinating acquaintance that 
he may keep his purity, to let go a tempting chance of 
business because there is something about its associa- 
tions that is going to degrade his life. It is for the old 
man who has to give up the friendship of a lifetime be- 
cause his loyalty to truth and principle is worth more 
to him than his dearest friend ; for the woman who 
abandons worldliness to serve her God, who turns her 
back on fashion and its wretched littleness that she may 



SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT. 163 

g'O lip into eternal life. It is for the minister wlio is 
tempted to say smooth things instead of true things to 
the people whose favor he desires ; for the people who 
are readier to have a chnrch that is popular and always 
full than one where, full or empty, no truth shall go 
unspoken, no righteousness unpraised, and no sin un- 
rebuked. Wherever truth and interest conflict (and 
where is the life so narrow and obscni-e that it has not 
furnished many a battle-field for that eternal strag- 
gle ?) ; Avherever the desii-e to be popular, to be rich, to 
be wise, to be anything else has to be cut away and cast 
behind a man that he may go on unhindered to be good 
and true and holy, there the law of the martyrs and the 
heroes, there the law of the Chi-ist, whose meat was to 
finish His Father's work, and who for the eating that 
eternal meat fasted from the bread that perisheth, comes 
down and proves itself the law of all true life. 

I know perfectly well that there is not a man or woman 
here that does not need this truth to-day. There is not 
one of you that some way or other is not trying to feed 
your higher lives on that nourishment which is fit only 
for the lower. How much there is to learn ! You rich 
men have got to learn that character is not built np of 
gold. ' ' How hard is it for them that trust in riches to en- 
ter into the kingdom of God !" Yoii have got to sweep 
the dry crusts of a^'arice off of your tables and heap 
them with the sweet luxury of charity before }'ou can 
feed your souls with the strength of holiness. God give 
you gi'ace to do it ! You amiable triflers in society, 
making your life one long aspii'ation after the applause 
and good ^^-ill of triflers like yourselves, you are fritter- 
ing your days and nights away, and you dare not stand 



164 SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT. 

lip in God's sight and even pretend to have grown in 
high principle or any godly grace, feeding on this straw 
that tastes so sweet ! Where should I stop if I began ? 
There is not one who does not need the strength of God 
to refuse some bread the devil is holding out to him, 
that in the hunger of his lower nature he may feed his 
soul on some eternal word of God. May our Lord give 
you power each in his own secret struggle to be victor. 

And again, what a truth this is, not merely for the 
weak man who needs strength, but for the afflicted 
man who wants comfort and faith ! I go to some poor 
creature and find him utterly desolate in his forlorn and 
emptied life. His money is gone, his house is burned, 
his health, is broken, his friend is faithless, his child is 
dead. I hear him cry out in his bitterness, " Yesterday 
my table was heaped up 5 now where shall my hungry 
mouth find its crumb to feed on ? " What shall I say to 
him ? What can I say but in some form or other just 
this truth : " Man shall not live by bread alone, but by 
every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God" ? 
You say God promised to supply your needs, and where 
is His provision ? Yes, but He loves best to supply your 
highest, not your lowest needs, and it is the law of all 
His universe that it is better for the lower life to hun- 
ger, if thereby the higher can be fed and made to grow. 

Here again this is no doctrine for great sorrows and 
bereavements only. Every time that God applies His 
law and we shrink under it, every time that He deprives 
the body that He may feed the soul, this is His call for 
us to find a consolation in the certainty that on some 
word of God, if not on the bread that my ignorance is 
craving, I may, if I will just be obedient, be fed into an 



SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT. 1G5 

unexpected strength. This is the way the saints were 
made ; this is the way that everywhere, where faithful 
souls are suffering, the gradual glory of new sainthoods 
is gathering now. The world falls oif from them, is 
torn away from them, it may be, but its very desertion 
leaves them clearer in the light, more utterly within 
the influence of God. New aspirations take the heart 
made empty of the old, and the soul that once clung 
to man flies in the hopefulness of hopelessness to Grod, 
and finds no path too hard that leads its new ambition 
up to Him. It learns a new prayer that grows to be its 
only prayer : 

" Nearer, my God, to Thee, 

Nearer to Thee ! 
E'en though it be a cross 

That raiseth me, 
Still all my song shall be, 
Nearer, my God, to Thee, 

Nearer to Thee ! " 

All that we have said to-day starts from and results 
in the truth of the distinctive and separate character of 
the Christian life above all others. Let us come back 
to that and make it our closing lesson. To be a Chris- 
tian is to be in a definite and specific state ; to become 
a Christian is to undergo a definite and specific change. 
No previous state by any possibility develops into this 
state, no previous process by any possibility accom- 
plishes of itself this change. B}^ one distinct new act 
the man who never has been Christ's servant gives 
himself to Christ, and then he is a " new creature," for 
he has been " born again." 

If this be so, then it follows that the Christian Church 



IGG SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT. 

must have one very definite and special work to do. 
Tlie object of the Church is, first and last and all the 
time, this one single object ; just to save men's souls — 
nothing else ; not to improve their bodies, not to inform 
their minds, nothing but just to tell them of the. new 
life of holiness, and to invite them to enter it through 
the new and living way which the crucified Christ has 
opened. 

I am sure there must be some among you who feel 
the attractiveness of such a truth, there must be some 
who are longing for just this same new way — not an 
old way that you have been trying and failing in till 
you are weary of it and have no heart left to try it any 
longer, but some ex]3eriment by which joii can start 
fresh, throw the dead past away, and be a "new man" 
in the fullness of your strength. What shall I say? 
It seems to me as if your wish were just the Bible offer. 
Here is a new life to live — not the old one in a higher 
progress, but a new life, whereon men enter by a wholly 
new admission. What you want is just what Christ pro- 
vides. And there is no other way for your want to be 
satisfied unless you can see Him standing by the side 
of His cross, pointing you to its foot, saying, "Leave 
your past there ; let the dead bury their dead ; follow 
thou Me. It may be into the fellowship of My suffer- 
ings, but what of that ? It certainly shall be into the 
fellowship of My glory and My holiness forevermore." 



XI. 
THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT. 

"Again, the devil taketli Him up into an exceeding high 
mountain, and showeth Him all the kingdoms of the world, and 
the gloiy of them." — Matt. it. 8. 

When one travels in tlie Holy Land it is interesting 
for him to watch himself and see which are the places 
which take most hold upon him. Very often, I think, 
such a one has found that it is not the places wliich 
have been the scenes of the most picturesque events in 
our Lord' s life so m.uch as those which witnessed the in- 
ward struggles and the development of His nature into 
full consciousness of itself that have most fastened the 
spirit of the Christian traveler. The hills above Naza- 
reth, wiiere Jesus must have constantly wandered when 
He was a boy ; the side of the Mount of Olives, where 
He fought out the inner battle of G-ethsemane — both of 
these scenes are full of power of the most subtle and 
imperious sort. And among all such scenes none can 
have stronger power than the scene of Christ's temp- 
tation, out of the story of which the words are taken 
from which I want to speak to you to-day. 

Those words describe a notable moment in the Sav- 
iour's life. L^p to this time He had been hardly more 
than a boy. He had lived in the small town of Naza- 

167 



168 THIRD SITNDAY IN LENT. 

retli. His mother's household and the labors of His 
father's shop had been His scenery. He had at last 
come up to Jerusalem and been baptized by John. But 
now in some mysterious way, in this scene in the 
desert, His vision opened and His world enlarged.. It 
does not matter to us just what it was that outwardly 
occurred. Before the soul of Christ the whole wide 
world lay open. He saw how large, how rich, how 
beautiful, how manifold it was. Judea and Nazareth 
were still the center of His outlook, but the world 
stretched away around them as the ocean stretches out 
away around the sailor in his little boat. Surely it was 
a great day when the Saviour of the world saw for the 
first time all the kingdoms and the glory of the world 
which He had come to save. 

Do you not see what the subject is of which I wish to 
speak ? In every vivid young life as it grows up there 
comes a time v/hich is to it what this moment was in 
the hfe of Jesus. It is the time when it catches sight 
of the world ; sometimes all of a sudden, as if a traveler 
among woods and country roads turned a corner and 
in an instant there lay before him the great city, flash- 
ing in the sun ; sometimes very gradually, as if the 
man walked on and on, hour after hour, along a long 
straight road, with what seemed at first a distant flash 
of gold opening hour after hour into the splendor of 
the vast metropolis. So does the young man in some 
moment or some period of his life come in sight of the 
great world. He comes out of the guarded seclusion 
of his home ; he presses against some narrow standard 
of his boyhood until it bursts and shows broader stan- 
dards lying out beyond it. Ordinarily such vision of the 



THIRD SL^^DAY IN LENT. TG9 

world is involved with some cliange of circumstances, 
but the real essential thing is in the heart of the young 
man himself. Shut a boy up in an island by himself, 
let him. grow up in solitude, and the time will surely 
come when his human heart will tell him stories of the 
unseen world of men, and he will sit upon the lonely 
rocks and seem to see that crowded human world far 
away across the unbroken waste of waters. You re- 
member how the weary spirit, recalling that experience, 
sings in front of Locksley Hall : 

''Make me feel the wild pulsation whicli I felt before the strife, 
When I heard my days before me and the tumnlt of my life 
Yearning for the large excitement that the coming years would 
yield — 
' Eager-hearted, as a boy when first he leaves his father's field, 
And at night, along the dusky highway near and nearer drawn, 
Sees in heaven the light of London flaming like a dreary dawn, 
And his spirit leaps within him to be gone before him then, 
Underneath the light he looks at, in among the throngs of 



Do not these words somehow recall to us the young 
man taken up into the high mountain and shown all the 
kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them f It is 
all very vague — it must be. That traveler upon the 
road to London, all aglow with its vision, does not 
trace how every street and alley runs in the great city, 
nor see how the bricks are laid in ever}^ man^s back 
yard. It is the "light of London," not the lamp in 
this or that shop-window, that he sees. And so it is 
the world, all vague, mysterious, and wonderful, which 
the spirit of the young man sees from his mountain, 
not this or that which is happening in the world. It 



170 THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT. 

is tlie world all together, the world of tumultuous, roar- 
ing, awful, fascinating human life, the kingdoms of the 
world, and the glory of them — this is what he sees. 
There is a special value, a special contribution to tie 
total experience and character of a man, in the j^earn 
which hold that vision — the years w^hen the narrow- 
ness of childhood is broken, but the absorption in the 
details of life has not yet begun ; the years wherein the 
young man is catching sight of the world. Blessed is 
he who keeps those years pure and lofty. 

In spite of the vagueness which necessarily belongs 
to this first sight of the great world it is still possible 
to discriminate so far as to see in what different ways 
this enlargement of life will come to different men. 
Let me point out a few. To one man it will come sim- 
ply as a sight of the possible greatness of experience, 
the mere surprised realization of how much there is 
which may happen to a man. The boy's life has been 
all safe and guarded. Little has come to him in any 
way. He has drifted about, as it were, in a little pond, 
striking forever the same shores, repeating over and 
over again the same experiences. By and by the time 
of larger vision comes. Some new thing happens ; a 
great sorrow, a great task, starts up like a mountain in 
his way. If he climbs the mountain, instead of being 
crushed under it, he looks abroad from it on the great 
world beyond. The pond, as it were, breaks open and 
becomes a stream, flowing he knows not to what end 
Something almost terrible, yet something which tests 
a man and brings out all the latent largeness which is 
in him, lies in such a moment. Tlie heart beats high. 
The breath comes fast. How long and broad and deep 



THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT. 171 

life is ! What wondrous tilings may happen before the 
end is reached, and the man, tired bnt enriched, passes 
out through the gate of death into the yet larger life 
beyond ! 

All this specializes and so intensifies itself as the 
young man chooses some particular occupation or study. 
Perhaps he goes into business. Think of him as he 
stands there upon the borders of the business world, 
just far enough into it to feel himself a part of it ; not 
so wrapped yet in its details that he cannot feel the great 
general magnificence of its entire mass and movement. 
He must be dull indeed if he does not feel something of 
the in spii'ation which so many ardent young merchants 
in every age, in every land, have felt. The sight of the 
thousands of enthusiastic, toiling men, the sound of 
clashing wills and roaring passions, the sudden spring 
or slow upheaval of enormous fortunes, the ring of 
powers happy in their energetic and successful use, the 
constant suggestion of danger, the constant need of 
courage, and, over all, like a great liglit in the sky from 
a city blazing with a million lamps, the sense of the 
growing happiness and the growing goodness of human- 
ity as the result, in spite of a thousand drawbacks, of 
this great world of commerce — this is the vision which 
ought to greet the young business man at the beginning 
of his business life ; this is the way in which he sees all 
the kingdoms of this new world which he is entering, 
and the glory of them ! 

And the young student has his visions, too — great 
outlooks into mysterious sciences : the heavens above, 
and the earth beneath, and the waters under the earth, 
all teeming with possible knowledge ; the wisdom of the 



172 THIRD SUNDAY IX LENT. 

wise men and tlie wisdom whieli no man has yet been 
wise enough to know. Alas for him who sits down to 
his higher school and college life lyith no such new sense 
of the greatness of the world of knowledge, solemnly, 
beantifnlly, opening in his soul! 

Or public life ! You step into some trifling public 
office and try to do its work. You perform the first 
duty of the fundamental office and cast your vote. You 
are within sight, as you do that, of all the grandeur of 
government the wide world over : of the tidal rise and 
fall of dynasties, of the great shepherds of men, of the 
despotisms, of the struggles of the people, of the slow 
birth of liberty, of all the thrones and parliaments and 
battle-fields. 

Or religious life ! You -say your prayer of consecra- 
tion, and lo ! as you pray, the curtain hfts. All that 
prayer means, all that God might do, all that God ever 
has done, for man, all the struggles of man's nature 
after God, all the faiths, all the speculations, all the 
superstitions, lie before you. The imperfect religions, 
the temples, the sjmagogues, the cathedrals, the altars 
to the unknown gods, the dee]3 thoughts and hopes and 
suspicions, and then Jerusalem and Jesus Christ and all 
the Christian histor}^ — all these stand round the young 
disciple praying his first prayer. 

You see, then, what I mean. The larger aspects of 
his general human life and of Ms special work in life 
open to a man at times as they opened to Jesus. To all 
earnest souls, as to His soul, come times when to them 
are shown all the kingdoms of the world and the glory 
of them. 

And then we turn back to our text again, for there is 



THIRD SUNDAY IX LENT. 173 

something else there which we have not looked at yet. 
In St. Matthew's story of the temptation, froin which 
our text is taken, it is said that it was " the devil '' who 
took Jesus up into a high mountain and showed Him 
the greatness of the world. Does that part of the story 
also find its correspondence in our lives? Is it the 
devil, the spirit of earthhness, the spirit of evil, which 
holds up before men's eyes these larger \dsions of life of 
which I have been speaking f I think we cannot realh^ 
answer that question until we go back and take in the 
whole of the stor}^ of our Lord's temptation. This visit 
to the lofty mountain was only a part of Christ's ex- 
perience in the wilderness. And at the beginning of 
the whole you remember how it is written, '' Then was 
Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be 
tempted of the devil." I think that that verse makes the 
matter plain and suggests the deepest truth concerning 
oui* own life. The larger government of our life is not 
in the de^-il's hands, but in the hands of the Spirit of 
God. All that the devil can do to us he can do only 
within the great fact that we are Grod's children and that 
God holds us in His unforgetting hands. We need not 
go into the devil's wilderness at all unless God's Spirit 
takes us there. If God's Spirit does take us there He 
will not turn round and go awa}^ and leave us. He will 
stay with us and have the final power over our lives 
— a power which, if we do not hinder it, may not save 
us always from pain, but will certainly always save us 
from sin. 

I would fain hope that as I so state what seems to me 
to be the doctrine of life and of the influences which 
are at work upon it which this verse involves, your own 



174 THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT. 

hearts might recognize it from your own experiences. 
Have you not known, many a time, that there were two 
poY/ers at work upon your life — one larger and one 
smaller, one superior and one inferior ? I seem to live 
within two spheres — one close upon my actions . and 
my thoughts, the other wider, vaster, outside this inner 
sphere, and the real master of it. My pains and plea- 
sures, the actual circumstances and incidents of my 
life, the world, kindly or hostile, as it may please to be, 
can govern. But the real thing I am — let me determine 
that that shall be God's, and there is no power in the 
universe that can pluck it away from Him. To the 
man who, as he goes on living, becomes more and more 
aware that he is in the power of the A^orld, but also be- 
comes more and more aware that he is in the power of 
the world only within the power of God ; that God put 
him where he is, and is always ready to sustain him 
there — to suc^h a man do not these words deeply. de- 
scribe his own daily life : '^ Led up of the Spii'it into the 
wilderness to be tempted of the devil '' f 

Apply this to the vision of the greatness of life on 
which we have been dwelling. It is the devil who 
shows it to us, and therefore it is full of temptation — 
temptation to dismay, to flippancy, to cowardice, to 
pride. But it is God who carries us where the devil 
can show it to us. Therefore it is full of glorious op- 
portunity — opportunity of aspiration, of enlargement, 
of humility, of trust. The times of bursting visions are 
the devil's hour, and they are the hour of the Spirit, too. 
Then, when the world grew big around them, men have 
given themselves up to Satan or have given themselves 
up to God. Then, Avhen the greatness of life confronts 



THIRD SUNDAY IX LENT. 175 

tlie soul, then (oh, how the thresholds of our stores and 
lu^lleges aud churches are strewn Avitli the corpses of 
those who were ruined, and are marked with the shining 
footprints of those who passed on to highest things I) 
— then, when the greatness of life confronts the soul, 
then is the time when the soul is lost or saved. 

And what decides whether it shall he ruin or salva- 
tion ? We may not answer wholly, for the individual 
will which lies behind every fortune and decision of our 
lives is too important for us to leave out, and too sul)- 
tle for us to trace in all its workings. But one thing, 
clearly, we may say : the power which the larger vision 
of the world will have oA^er a, man will depend prima- 
rily upon the kind of religion which is in him when that 
vision breaks upon him. And that is only another way 
of saying that it will depend npon what sort of man 
he is. For a man's religion, if it be real, is not what a 
man holds, but what he is. See, then, whether I am not 
right. A boy or man comes to one of these enlarge- 
ment places. All that I described takes place for him. 
The world grows great around him. Suppose, then, 
that what he calls his religion has been of the sort of 
which so many men's religion is ; suppose that it has 
been selfish and that it has been formal ; suppose this 
man or boy has always thought of the service of God 
as something which was to be done in order that he 
might be saved from suffering — something which God 
would punish him if he did not do, and also something 
Vvdiich consisted in a set of habits, in certain special out- 
ward actions which he must not omit to do. There is 
n thing called a religion which never gets further than 
those two ideas. And then suppose that the great 



176 THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT. 

Yforld enlarges itself in vision round a man witli a re- 
ligion such as that. What power has his religion to 
make him equal to the enlarged, enlightened world ? 
His little idea of personal safety goes all to pieces in 
the midst of this vast view of how great the world is, 
and of what great things God is doing in it. Who is 
he, that there should be a compact of insurance between 
his soul and God ? And the set of habits, whether of 
thought or action, within which he has intrenched him- 
self has not such flexibility as to take in this larger life. 
So they fail him and he has no protection. The little 
boat breaks and is sunk on this great ocean. It was fit 
only for the quiet river where the life has been peace- 
fully lived thus far. Oh, of how many shipwrecks this 
is the whole story ! How the shore where youth and 
manhood, childhood and manhood, meet is strewn with 
the ruins of what once seemed to be religious convic- 
tions and religious resolutions, which all broke up into 
fragments the moment that they came in sight of the 
immensity of life ! Sometimes, when. I see the good 
children trained in some selfish and formal religiousness 
hurrying on to the time when the devil must certainty 
show them the kingdoms of the world, and the glory 
of them, it seems to me as if I saw a great company of 
bright-faced boys and girls hurrying down with their 
toy boats in their hands to the ocean's edge, expecting 
to get into them and sail over the Atlantic to Europe. 
They will never get through the fringe of surf on the 
sea-shore. The sight of their hopeless life is infinitely 
sad and pathetic. 

There is a religion which is wholly different from 
this. It is entirely unselfish and it is profoundly real. 



THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT. 177 

Down at its base there is the most earnest love for God 
and the most complete conviction of His love for iis. 
His service is a joy and deligiit. And jo}^ and delight 
are never formal, bnt are of the very essence and sub- 
stance of the man himself. Let this religion stand face 
to face with the enlarged vision of life. This man is all 
wrapped np in God. His yonng heart beats and throbs 
to see God glorified and to do something for His glory. 
The little world where he has lived thus far has seemed 
too small for all that he wanted to do for his Father. 
Now let the world enlarge. Let science open all her 
shining fields. Let commerce turn the key of locked- 
np lands. Let the winds come laden with the sound of 
hymns which faithful souls are singing in the dark of 
blind religions. You cannot make the world too large 
and manifold for this man's God. His religion really 
is for God, not for himself 5 therefore the largeness of 
life does not bewilder and dismay, but satisfies it. The 
soul takes that which the devil shows it, and reads divine 
meanings in it and makes divine uses of it, and waves 
aside the dark guide, while it passes forward into the 
light on which that guide has opened for it the door. 

Oh, how good it is when sometimes one sees that! 
O my dear friends, it is a terril^le thing when one's 
religion is too small for the world, and is always leav- 
ing great parts of the world's life unaccounted for, un- 
illuminated, and is always dreading to have the world 
made any larger, lest this religion shall seem even more 
meager and insufiicient. But it is a great thing when 
the world is too small for one's religion, and the soul's 
sense of the glory and dearness of God is always crav- 
ing larger and larger regions in which to range. Then 



178 THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT. 

welcome all discoveries, all iUuminations, all visions of 
the greatness of the world of God. 

Here, surely, one may plead with parents, even witli 
those who are very conscientious in the religious train- 
ing of their childi^en. You have taught your boys and 
girls that they must not do wi'ong or God will punish 
them. You have taught them to say their morning and 
night prayers. You have brought them to church, and 
perhaps you rejoice to see how well they follow the ser- 
vice, how reverently they kneel, how the charm of the 
liturgy seems to have caught their ear. I have no 
fault to find with any of that. God forbid! But oh, 
there must be something more than that, there must be 
something deeper. The time will surely come when, 
unless there be something else behind them, the fear 
of futui*e punishment will fade before the tremendous 
fascination of the world, and conformity with religious 
habits will seem trivial or slavish beside the vivid activ- 
ity of a life which summons the children with its voice of 
thunder. Are you leading your children to know God ; 
to know God the Father of all life, the fountain of all en- 
ergetic action ; to know Him so loftily that to exist for 
Him, to work with Him, shall seem to them to be the 
glory of existence ? If so, then you are preparing them 
for life. No matter how httle and limited their lives 
may seem to-day, when they come forth and behold tlie 
kingdoms of the earth, and all their glory, it will not 
disturb their faith, but establish it by seeming to display 
a worthy kingdom for their King. The young lawyer 
comes in sight of the vast complexity of human inter- 
ests ; the young doctor comes in sight of the mystery 
of the operations of the force of life ; the young politi- 



THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT. 179 

ciau comes in sight of the vast complexity of govern- 
ment. Do they know God — know Him as their Father 
and theii* Friend? If the}^ do, their knowledge must 
rejoice in this enlarged enlightenment. It is as if the 
sun had shone in a little box, its glory beaten back and 
restrained against the narrow walls ; but now the walls 
are broken down, and all the wide-spread landscape, river 
and field and hill and lake, lies waiting for his beams. 
Now it seems worth while for the snn to shine. So let 
me know God, and then every enlargement of the world 
shall make it seem more worth while for God to be, and 
so more sure that God is. 

I speak thus very earnestly about the training of chil- 
dren for life, and yet I would not make it seem as if I 
thought that any preparation for the meeting of a soul 
with the enlarged vision of the world could insure the 
results of that meeting. The coming of a nature to its 
full vision is like the coming of an heir to his inheri- 
tance. Those who have trained the heir from child- 
hood ought to have made him ready for the life which 
he has got some day to live. And yet no imperfection 
of their training can excuse the heir if, coming into his 
inheritance, he is unfit for its demands and turns out 
either a profligate or a sluggard. And so I speak to 
parents and bid them do all they can, b}^ a profound 
and lofty and spiritual training, to make their children 
ready for the larger life which some day they will have 
to live. But then I turn to the children, to those who 
have now ceased or are ceasing to be children, and say 
to them directly, " Be ye ready ! " Seek in your Naza- 
reth homes such Christ-like knowledge of the Heavenly 
Father that when the windows open and the whole 



180 THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT. 

world lies blazing in yonr sight youi' eager faith shall 
claim it all for God, as Christ upon the mountain 
claimed the whole world for Him whojn He had learned 
to know was King of all of it. So deeply realize the 
power of God in your own soul that all the world shall 
seem to you to be only too narrow a theater for that 
power's operation and displa}^ The devih holds up the 
last newly discovered truth. Let your soul pluck it 
out of the devil's hand and make it God's. The devil 
shows you a new realm of living and says, " Behold a 
new temptation." Let your soul answer, ''Nay, a new 
witness of my Father and a new chance to grow what 
He would have me be." Do you not see, if this is 
what the great vision may accomplish for you, how the 
very Spirit Himself may do His best work for you by 
leading you up into the wilderness to be tempted of the 
devil? 

I do not want to draw so near the end without saying 
a few words upon another aspect of our subject which 
interests me deeply. I have spoken thus far only of 
the individual life and of the visions which come some- 
times to it. But is not all that I have said true also, 
sometimes, of the world at large ? Is it not true of the 
world at large that it, too, comes to its great times of 
visions ? There do come times in history — and it would 
seem as if we were living in one of those times now — 
when the whole outlook of the world becomes enlarged. 
If you had asked a thinking man in the middle of the 
eighteenth century what he supposed would be the con- 
dition of the world a hundred years from then, would 
not his answer probably have been, " Not very different 



THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT. 181 

from what it is now. Some changes there will be, no 
doubt, bnt mainly things are settled, and the world will 
go on very much the same " ? Here in the nineteenth 
century ask the same question, and can you imagine 
youi'self receiving the same answ^er? "I cannot tell," 
the person whom you question must reply, "but cer- 
tainly some broader, deeper things are coming. Man- 
kind is gi-eater than it has known itself to be. I see in 
a mist and haze — but still I do see — the pinnacles of a 
more glorious city, the outline of a larger world." So 
the world vaguely feels about itself. It has gone up — '■ 
the Spirit of God surely sending it, and yet often the 
devil surety meeting it there — it has gone up into the 
mountain, and is seeing all its own future kingdoms, 
and the glory of them. 

Of the causes w^hich have brought this change we 
must not stop to speak. We know what many of them 
are : popular liberty, rapid communication, the increase 
of wealth, the wonderful work of science, the enthusi- 
asm of humanity — all these have opened the world's 
eyes and enlarged its vision. 

But this larger-visioned time in the world's life de- 
mands exactly what we saw that the time of larger 
vision in the life of the individual demanded — an un- 
selfish and a spiritual faith, I said, a religion which is 
neither selfish nor formal. This is what must make the 
w^orld fit to go forward into its mysterious and mighty 
future. On every side I hear the breaking of the selfish 
and the formal creeds. That man should just save 
himself out of the ruin and get to safety through some 
private bargain with Omnipotence ; that man should 
try to do by ceremonies and organizations those things 



182 THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT. 

wliicli of tlieii' very natiiTe only can be done by living 
hearts and wills — these conceptions of religion, once the 
rules of religious thought, have lost theii* power and can 
rule religions thought no longer. But the faith which 
forgets its own salvation as it labors for the salvation 
of the world and the glory of Grod; the faith which 
looks for the salvation of the world and the glory of 
Grod, not to the setting up of hierarchies and the magic 
of ceremonies, but to the power of God in the souls of 
men, to the new manhood in Jesus Christ — that faith 
has the key of the present, and no conceivable future 
can grow so mighty or rich as to outgrow the power of 
that faith. 

Because the Christian faith is intrinsically unselfish 
and spiritual, not selfish and formal, we know that it 
will prove itself, not less, but more, the faith for all 
humanity, as humanity enters more and more into its 
great future. The baser and meaner parts of her pres- 
ent life the Christian faith must cast away. In doing 
so she will become, not less, but more, herseK; more 
purely, simply Christ. Christ, the revelation of the un- 
speakable love of God, the utterance of the yet undis- 
played capacity of man — this, which is the Christian 
faith, no human progress can outgo, but every larger 
and richer development of human life must demand it 
with a more and more earnest hunger. 

Such is the Christian's assurance of the future of his 
faith in the great w^orld. But draw the circle in once 
more and let me say one closing word of your own life. 
You cannot make that life so large that it will not need 
Christ or that Chi-ist wiU not satisfy and fill it. Oh, if 



THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT. 183 

you stand to-day where any new vision is bursting 
into sight, if any hope is dawning, if an}- work is call- 
ing you, if any new study is rolling back its silver doors, 
if manhood is glowing in the near sky of your dreams, 
if as you look out from any mountain you are seeing 
the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them, may 
He whose those kingdoms are, because He redeemed 
them with His blood, be with you as you look upon 
them. By His strength and power may you be very 
consecrated and very holy, and so be master of your 
vision. Then may you go on into the world which you 
discern, and both make it, and be yourself made by it, 
absolutely Christ's. 



XII. 
FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 

" And David said unto Natlian, I have sinned against the Lord. 
And Nathan said unto David, The Lord also hath put away thy 
sin ; thou shalt not die." — 2 Sam. xii. 13. 

Here is the story of a confession and a forgiveness, 
told with a compactness that almost startles us, the two 
are crowded so closely together. King David, after his 
great sin against Uriah, had hardly been brought to 
own his guilt, had hardly got the words of confession 
off his lips, before the prophet, who represented before 
him the justice and authority of God, gave back the 
answer as if he had ifc all ready upon his lips and had 
been waiting for the chance to give it. "I have sinned 
against the Lord." " The Lord also hath put away thy 
sin." 

We talk so much about confession and forgiveness ; 
we elaborate their theor};^ so much ; we see such intri- 
cate relations of the divine and human natures involved 
in the transaction, that we almost unconsciously trans- 
fer the long train of thought into a long period of 
time. We feel as if that result which implies so much 
spiritual action must be reached only by a process of 
correspondingly prolonged duration. " To confess and 
be forgiven — that is the work of months and years, of 
a whole Ufetime," we declare. And then comes in this 



FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 185 

simple story of liow the whole was but the transaction 
of a moment with David — of how one minute he was 
standing obstinate and rebellious, stout in his sin, and 
the next minute the whole change had come and the 
hard heart was softened and the proud will had bent 
and the sin was gone. All this comes in to remind us 
that the most intricate moral processes take but a 
moment to result. The volcano that the chemistry of 
years has been preparing breaks into eruption in an 
hour. .The blossom that the patient plant has been de- 
signing for a century bur ts into flower in a single night. 
And so the reconciliation of a soul to Grod, which it has 
been the labor of the ages to make possible, which 
dates for its conception back to the dateless time when 
the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world, 
comes to its completion in a period too short to mea- 
sure, in the sudden meeting of a soul filled with peni- 
tence and a God filled with mercy. 

To-day I wish to speak to you of the true nature of 
the confession and forgiveness of sin. But since we 
must find on unfolding it that the whole process is made 
up of many parts, and so mUj get this wrong idea 
about the time it requires, I would guard myself at the 
outset by this story. The whole is but a moment's work. 
Men, making their systems, cast out the notion of an 
instantaneous conversion. If conversion means turn- 
ing from bad to good, from self to God, lo, here is cer- 
tainly an instantaneous conversion. Because the quick 
chemistries of grace take our slow study a lifetime — 
nay, an eternity — to understand, let us not forget that 
it takes God but a moment to work their beautiful com- 
binations and create the strange new life whose power 



18G FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 

is folded up within them. I say it boldly and fully : 
you ma}^ be converted now and here, as you sit ifl. church. 
Here and now you may confess your sins and be for- 
given and start a better life. Oh, if God w^oidd only 
grant that 3'ou might ! It did not take David any 
longer. At least keep in mind that it is possible while 
I try to explain to you in full what the true nature of 
confession is. 

What is it to confess one's sin ! I think that the com- 
plete act includes four parts, all of which are necessary, 
the absence of any one of which makes the act incom- 
plete. In order to make the matter plainer let us talk, 
not about sin in general, but about some special sin — 
say the sin of selfishness. I select this sin for several 
reasons : first, because it is the commonest sin in lives 
not openly vicious ; second, because it is the one least 
easily detected and confessed ; and third, because in its 
large scope it includes and embraces every other sin. 
What is necessar^^ then, for a selfish man really and 
truly to confess his selfishness ? 

1. To own that he has done selfish things. That is 
the first step to be taken. That is the first struggle. 
To get at the plain facts ; to set out in their array the 
long line of acts that have not been done from any 
higher motive than the mere desire for one's own pei'- 
sonal comfort or advantage. Even this is not easy. 
The acts know^ their own guiltiness and flee behind all 
kinds of shelter to escape scrutiny ; and the man who 
is really bent upon discovering and confessing them 
has to seize hold of their reluctance with a strong hand 
and force them out. Are you bent on finding your own 
selfishness ? First of all, vou must not let the occasional 



FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 187 

iinselfisli tilings that you have done, the few brilliant 
days when you can recall some generous deed of self- 
s:icrifice — you must not let the luster of such rare excep- 
tions, all the more lustrous from their very rareness, 
hide from your view the constant tenor of your living, 
which has been made up of things in which your neigh- 
bor's good has had no share of influence. And then you 
must not let yourself be blinded by the specious sophis- 
try which tells jou that these selfish acts of yours were 
not entirely selfish, because in some remote effect of 
them they have brought some good to some fellow- 
man. Very possibly they have. Hardly any deed that 
is not essentially and necessarily bad can help result- 
ing in some indirect and distant good. Your self-indul- 
gences may have in some way benefited others ; but if 
you had not this in view, if you did not purpose and 
intend it, as you know you did not, then the ultimate 
effects of the deeds do not affect their character. They 
were selfish and only selfish. You must begin by sweep- 
ing aside everything that hides them, and letting them 
stand fairly out. Be honest first, and when the great 
procession of a life lived only for your own indulgence 
— not dissolute, not malignant, not violent or outra- 
geous in any way, only selfish through and through ; just 
exactly such a life as you would have lived if you had 
come into the world forbidden to do anything for G-od 
or fellow-man, and only by an occasional irresistible im- 
pulse breaking over the law to serve either — when such 
a procession of life marches round and round before 
the inexorable honesty of your self-examination, confes- 
sion will begin and reach its first stage in the assured 
conviction of the fact, " I am a selfish creature." 



188 FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 

2. Another struggle will come as a man passes on to 
the second stage, which is the full acknowledgment of 
the true moral character of such a life. Once convinced 
that he is selfish, a soul, with more or less conscious- 
ness of tlie sophistry that it is using, almost always sets 
to work to feel that selfishness is not wrong, but right. 
" Very well," it says, " I am selfish, I do live for myself ; 
but what then? Whom should I live for? Is not my 
own interest and good my first care? Who will take 
care of me if I do not take care of myself ? Must not 
charity begin at home ? Is not this the way the world 
is meant to work, that every man should nurse his own 
interests, and so, by the development of each, they all 
should grow ? Is not mankind meant to rise to its per- 
fection as a flock of birds rises, each pair of hurrying 
wings moved by its own fear of danger or hope of gain, 
without consideration of the others, the result being that 
the whole solid flock rises together and moves like one 
great cloud of the sky ? Is it not best that each should 
care for himseK? And so, selfish as I am, is not my 
selfishness a ^drtue, instead of a sin?" Unstated, 
vaguely felt, this is the acted theory of thousands. No 
man can possibly confess till first he casts this fallacy 
entirely away. " It is wrong to live to myself ; it is not 
the design of life." Around him he must hear a great 
long wail of human suffering, rising and falling, now 
wilder and now weaker, but never dying utterly away 
— the ceaseless claim of needy humanity to be helped 
by the humanity that has abundance. More quiet, but 
not less pathetic, he must also hear the longing appeal 
of what seem the happiest and fullest hearts for sym- 
pathy in their joy as others seek it in their sorrow. Let 



FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 189 

his ears open to the appeals, and his conscience must 
open too. He will see that no man has a right to shut 
himself away from those whose life is one with his ; nay, 
that no man has a right to do any act unless he sees 
that some one else will be the better or the happier for 
it as well as he. He will see that selfishness is wicked, 
and begin to be disgusted at his life, so full of it. He 
will add to the acknowledgment of the act the acknow- 
ledgment of the act's moral character, and his confes- 
sion will be, not merely, " I have been selfish," but " I 
have sinned." 

3. Then the selfish man passes on to the third step of 
his confession, which is the acknowledgment that the 
sin he has committed is an offense against Grod. Here 
is the fii'st place w^here religion necessarily begins. All 
up to this point may be wholly unreligious. But the 
confession must be made to some one. What is the 
authority w^hich has been violated by these acts of yours, 
which you have decided against as being selfish ? Is it 
just the natural authority of the rights of your fellow- 
men — some human claim which they have upon your 
sympathy and help ? I think not. I do not see that 
it is possible to show that, besides the right that every 
man has not to be injured by his neighbors, there is 
another claim by which he can complain if his neigh- 
bors do not go out of their way to help him. Is it, then, 
some abstract law or principle of the mutual harmonies 
of universal life against which the selfish man sins, to 
which he must confess ? Surely no obedience to such 
an abstraction — which, after all, is only a generaliza- 
tion, an induction of the, man's own mind — can bind a 
man's hot passions from their self-indulgence, or bend 



190 FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 

liis proud head in penitent confession of wrong-doing. 
What then ? The law must come from Grod. We must 
be deeply, keenly conscious that every time we have 
done a selfish act we have broken His distinct command- 
ment. We must have so entire a sense of how utterly 
He is love that we shall see every unloving thing that 
we have ever done to be a direct insult to His nature. 
We must keep our hearts before the spectacle of the 
Eternal Unselfishness, " the Lamb slain from the foun- 
dation of the world," till its great argument grows to be 
the source of our responsibility and the ground of our 
condemnation. " If He so loved us, we ought also to 
love one another." The new commandment must con- 
vict us. We must teach our eye to trace up the threads 
of accountability from all our selfish deeds and see them 
meeting and held fast in the one great hand of the 
great Judge who sits upon the throne, and we must 
bow under the shadow of His hand and confess our sin 
to Him. 

No one knows till he has really thus confessed how 
great the relief is of a recognition of this sole respon- 
sibility to God. We mount above our fellow-men and 
their judgment-seats. We leave tlieir puny criticisms 
far below us. They may be right in blaming us — no 
doubt they are. But past their blame the very magni- 
tude of our guilt exalts us to a higher judgment-seat. 
The soul, full of God's power and love at once, is not 
satisfied to utter itself to less than Him. It must cry 
as David did in that Fifty-first Psalm, which he wrote 
nbout this same crime touching Uriah : "Against Thee, 
Thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy 
sight." In one word, it must be able to complete the 



FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 191 

whole confession of onr text, and say, not merely, "I 
have sinned," bnt " I have sinned against the Lord." 

4. And what more is there in the true confession of 
selfishness 1 Only one thing, I think, and that is the 
acknowledgment that the selfish acts which we confess 
are representations and expressions of a selfish charac- 
ter and heart in which onr trne guilt abides. If you 
coidd make out an absolutely complete list of all the 
selfish acts that you have ever done, all the selfish words 
that you have ever spoken, all the selfish thoughts that 
you have ever thought, and bringing it up, should unroll 
it in the sight of God, and, pointing with shame down 
the long catalogue, should say, " Look, Lord, and read. 
They are all there. I have not left out one. The black 
tale is complete ^' — when that is over, have you confessed 
your selfishness? You have not touched it. As fertile 
and as foul as ever, it lies deep in your heart, ready 
to breed new selfish acts when these are cleared away. 
Not till you trace these things down to their roots; not 
till you say, '' I did wrong things because I was a wrong 
thing. Hived for myself, not for my neighbors, be_ 
cause I loved myself a great deal better than my neigh- 
bors, and so broke God's law in my heart before I broke 
it with my hands. I was, I am, a living violation of it 
every day I live" ; not till a spiritual logic traces back 
thus corrupt deeds to their source in a corrupt nature ; 
not till "I have sinned" means "I am sinful," is the 
confession finally complete. 

How feebly we talk and think about the judgment- 
day ! We tremble when we picture God upon His great 
white throne, hurling at our dismayed terror the long 
succession of our sins. We shudder at the thought of 



192 FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 

this deed and of that deed which we must meet again. 
The true horror of the judgment-day will be the making 
manifest of hearts. What I have done will fade before 
the preeminent shame at what I have been. Then, if 
not before, deeds will take their true places as mere 
fruits and types of characters. Just as we grow into 
the solemnity of the judgment-day we attain its point 
of \iew already, and learn to enlarge David's " I have 
sinned" into Simon Peter's "I am a sinful man, O 
Lord." Then, as we said, the confession is complete. 

Taking a single sin, then — selfishness — I have tried 
to show you how, in the heart of a man who is really 
trying to confess his wickedness, the confession gradu- 
ally grows to fullness. First there is the seeing of the 
fact, then, the acknowledgment of the moral character 
of the fact, then the owning of responsibihty to Grod 
for the wrong-doing, and last the consciousness that the 
wrong-doing is a wrong-being, that the sins are sinful- 
ness. It may come upon a man all in a flash, as it did 
on David ; or it may grow hardh^, fought against stoutly, 
conquering step by step for itself, taking years, per- 
haps, to get entire possession of the nature. But it 
must come, and it must all come, or the man's sins are 
not genuine^ confessed. When it has all come, a man 
need not question how it came — slowly or swiftly, calmly 
or violent!}^ ; however it came, the confession is perfect, 
and in the utterness of his humiliation there is nothing 
more that he can do. 

And what comes then? Ah, here we come to the 
better news, the glad tidings, the "Gospel" of our ser- 
mon. '^ I have sinned aci'ainst the Lord." And Nathan 



FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 193 

answered, ^'The Lord also liath put away thy sin." 
Quickly as all God's laws fulfil themselves, quick as the 
rain- drops catch the sunlight and the rainbow springs 
to sight, quick as the hillside hears the thunder and 
answers with its echo, so quick — immediately — the 
whole forgiveness follows on the whole confession. 
We need to know how absolute this is. I want to state 
it in its fullness and invariableness. There is a law in 
our natui-es that makes it necessarily certain that if 
you touch a particular muscle the arm will quiver 5 if 
you appeal to a particular feeling the anger will rise 
and flush the face. Now just so it is a law of God's 
nature — invariable with a godlike uniformity, more 
certain than the succession of the seasons or the com- 
ings and the goings of the stars — tliat if a human being 
touches Him with a true confession He must answer 
with an unreserved forgiveness. 

Notice, my friends, who think to try, this Lent, per- 
haps to-day, this great experiment: it must be the 
complete confession that we have been describing. No 
element of all the four must be left out. It must have 
all the honesty and profoundness of the total act. No 
flippant temporary sorrow, no moment's gust of wild 
regret, will a.nswer. But to the patient, steady, whole- 
souled faith of the entire confession the attempt is no 
experiment. It must succeed. It has succeeded as soon 
as it is made. '^ The sin is put away" the very moment 
that the heart has dropped its burden by the cross : " I 
have sinned against the Lord." 

"Are you not stating this too blankly?" some cau- 
tious guardian of the Gospel asks. " Is there not some- 
thing more needed before the perfect forgiveness, the 



194 FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 

entire reconciliation, can be tlms assumed? Will not 
your words make men presumptuous unless you add 
something' else ? " What shall it be, then 1 I confess 
I do not know. Jesus says/' Ask, and ye shall receive ; 
seek, and ye shall find." Shall we say that a man must 
be sorry for his sin and leave it before he can be for- 
g'i v^en ? Certainly he must ; but that act of converted 
resolution is included, I hold, in the confession that I 
have described. If David meant just to go on in sinning 
— killing new Uriahs and taking their wives — Nathan 
surely would never have accepted his confession. The 
prophet evidently felt that it included the determina- 
tion of a better life. But shall we say that this better 
life must be begun, that some good steps in it must be 
taken to prove its reality, before a man ought to count 
liimseK forgiven ? That is not so, for the true ground 
whereon I trust I am forgiven is not the symptoms that 
I see in myself. That would make very poor business 
of my faith and peace. It is the simple belief in the 
promises of God. And then, besides, since one of the 
great incentives — nay, the great incentive — to a holy 
life is the delighted gratitude of known forgiveness, it 
surely is not right to tell me I can know I am forgiven 
only by seeing in myself those fruits which can of their 
very nature spring only from a pardon which I have 
already recognized and given thanks for. Or shall we 
say that a man's reconciliation with God is not perfect 
till he has made some set profession of his new inten- 
tions and entered into the outward covenant of a sac- 
ramental church ? Again I say. Not so ! How can that 
be necessary to an act's doing which has no meaning 
except as a token that the act is already done! A 



FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 195 

man is forgiven before lie is baptized ; so sui'ely neither 
baptism nor confirmation is necessary to his forgive- 
ness. Their holy place comes afterward. 

Yes, there is danger lest we guard the Gospel over- 
much. There is danger lest the w^alls we build to keep 
the truth in keep the souls of men out. Let us not be 
afraid to be as free as Christ. A whole confession 
must bring a true forgiveness. If w^e confess our sins, 
He is faithful and just to forgive us. The moment 
you cry, " God be merciful to me a sinner," the reply 
is ready : ^' Thy faith hath saved thee ; go in peace." 

My friends, our Lent is here. There is no magic in 
its days. It is only that we have resolved tiU Easter to 
give more time and thought to our religious life. All 
that may come to much or it may come to nothing. I 
beg you, let it come to much. And the w^ay to do that 
is to bring your soul up to the point of whole and gen- 
uine confession. By any discontent you have now with 
your life, by any longing for a better heart, by the 
solemn responsibility you owe to God, by the great un- 
utterable love of Christ, I beg you, as if I went from ear 
to ear and pleaded with each of you, not to let this Lent 
pass without confessing your sinfulness and being for- 
given and becoming a grateful servant of Jesus Christ. 
May God grant it for all. 



XIII. 
FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 

" Ye are they wliicli have continued with Me in My temptations. 
And I appoint unto you a kingdom, as My Father hath appointed 
unto Me."— Luke xxii. 28, 29. 

There are many texts in the Bible from wliich I 
might easily start in saying what I especially want to 
say to you to-da^j. I take this one because it will con- 
nect our study with the history of Christ. It was near 
the end of His ministry. He was rejoicing in its great 
success. Behold, He and His disciples were to have a 
kingdom where they were to reign like kings. But as 
He thinks of this successful close of His great work His 
mind runs back over the days when it had seemed as 
if it never would succeed. The}^ who are to share His 
kingdom are also they who have been with Him "in His 
temptations." The end could not be reached without re- 
calling the memory of all the dark stages of the journej^ 
He could not stand in the glorj?- of success without re- 
membering how He had passed through clouds of fail- 
ure. The days when the Pharisees had insulted Him, 
when the people had turned deaf ears to His teachings, 
when even His own disciples had staggered in their faith 
and hesitated whether they w^ould not leave Him — aU 
these days came back to His remembrance, as to the 

196 



FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 197 

recollection of many a man the days of liis failure have 
seemed to start into life and reality again jnst as he was 
stretching out liis hand to lay it on the prize. This is 
what gives the profound pathos, the mysterious and sol- 
emn mingling of sadness and joy, wliicli comes in every 
finally achieved success. 

It is this subject which I wish to speak about to-day 
— the relation between success and the failures which 
precede it. What have the failm-es to do with the suc- 
cess ? Evidently there are two possible ideas regarding 
their relationship. One idea would make the failures 
and the success to be quite separate from each other. 
It would suppose that a man went on failing and fail- 
ing and failing for a long time, until at last his circum- 
stances changed and everything was altered. Some 
lucky accident sent the wind round the other way, and 
then the ship, which had been struggling in the face 
of the gale and losing ground all the time, was caught 
by the new breeze and carried on triumphantly into 
its port. The other idea believes that the success which 
shows itself at last cannot possibly be the sudden thing 
which it appears to be. It must have been present, 
gradually working itself out underneath the failures, 
all the time. The failures must have been borne upon 
its bosom, and even in some degree created by the local 
and temporary reactions of the same force which made 
the great success. There is a verse of one of the sub- 
tlest and truest of the English poets of our time which 
expresses so perfectly this second idea of the relation 
between final success and the failures which precede it 
that I quote it to you at once. He draws his figure 
from the ocean, with its waves and its tide : 



198 FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT, 

'^ For while the tired waves, vainly breaking, 
Seem here no painful inch to gain, 
Far back, through creeks and inlets making. 
Comes silent, flooding in, the main." 

You see the picture which is in those words — a stretch 
of sea-shore beach, with the waves breaking in upon it, 
but every wave a failure ; every wave bursting with a 
little petulant hiss upon the shore, and falling back dis- 
appointed into the great body of the sea behind it ; every 
wave a failure, but all the while the great sea itself, far 
out behind the sea-shore waves, lifted with a mighty 
movement and rolling itself irresistibly in upon the 
shore. 

" Through creeks and inlets making, 
Comes silent, flooding in, the main." 

The noisy waves are failures, but the great silent tide is 
a success. The waves are borne upon the bosom of the 
tide ; they share its motion ; nay, the failure of each of 
them in some degree is a reaction of the tide's motion 
as it is cast back from the beach. But all the time the 
tide is succeeding while the waves are failing. The 
failures are carried on the bosom of a success which is 
present underneath them all the time. This is the idea 
of the relation of failures and success to each other 
which is in the verse of Clough. If we drew a sea-pic- 
ture of the other idea it would not be, like this, a picture 
of the tide behind and under the waves. It would be a 
picture of the turning tide, of the flow following upon 
the ebb, of a tide which had fallen into failure followed 
by another tide which brought success. This would be 
the fitting picture of success and failure separate from 



FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 199 

each other, and one only coming into life after the 
other had died and passed away. 

I hope that I do not obscure with metaphors what I 
wsLiit to make very plain indeed. Let us turn back and 
see exactly what our metaphors mean when we apply 
them to the life of Jesus, of which I began to speak. 
There had been a day, two years before, when Jesus 
was preaching at Capernaum 5 and when His sermon 
was finished it is written that " many of His disciples 
went back, and walked no more wdth Him." It was the 
darkest period of His ministry. It was the time when 
it most seemed as if His Gospel was going to be left on 
one side, and He was going to do no mighty work. And 
now what shall we say about that time in its relation 
to the other time, recorded in the chapter from which 
I take my text, when He sat with His disciples at the 
table of the Passover and calmly shared with them the 
kingdom which His Father had bestowed on Him? 
Was it simply that betw^een these two times something 
had happened which had made a change in the fortunes 
of the Gospel, so that what once was failing afterward 
began to succeed ? Was it not, far more truly, that the 
Gospel was always succeeding from the fii'st, and that 
what seemed its temporary failures had always been 
backed by and borne upon a great movement which 
started at the birth of Jesus ; nay — why should we stop 
there ? — which started with the first conception of the 
birth of Jesus in the mind of God, and never can stop 
till His work of salvation shall be completely done ? 
Do you not see the difference of these two ideas ? Do 
you not see, also, the great difference which it must 
have made to Jesus which of these two ideas He Him- 



200 FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT, 

self had about what seemed to he the faihng moments 
of His life ? Suppose He had the first — the idea that 
the coldness and indifference and hostility abont Him 
meant an ebbing tide, a great swinging back away from 
Him of the whole sonl and substance of human faith, 
and that there must be a total change, a whole new dif- 
ferent movement, before He could again get hold of men 
and make them believe in Him. Must He not have 
been paralyzed ? Must He not have just sat down list- 
lessly upon the shore, or paced restlessly up and down 
the sand, waiting for the turning of the tide ? But if 
He was full of the other idea — if He knew that a great 
success in the whole was perfectly possible even with the 
failure of many — aye, perhaps all — of the single mani- 
fest efforts which He put forth ; if He knew that each 
word which He spoke to each single hearer might fall 
back with only the slightest effect produced upon his 
soul, and yet that His word as one great total power of 
God might be all the time conquering the soul of the 
world, then what patience, what calmness, and what 
zeal to work there must have come to Him ! How He 
must have been conscious that He was succeeding, even 
though every effort fell so far short of its endeavor that 
it seemed to be a failure ! The special wave that touched 
Chorazin or Bethsaida dropped defeated, and '• He could 
do no mighty work there, because of their unbelief '' ; 
but the great ocean of His truth was pressing on and 
occupying the world all the time. 

Now it does seem to me to be of very great impor- 
tance that you and I, my friends, men and women who 
are sure to fail in hundreds and hundreds of the best 
struggles of our lives — nay, who are sure to fail in some 



FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 201 

large degree in all tlie special struggles whicli we ever 
make — and yet who know that life would "be intoler- 
able unless we kept the hope of some success which we 
shonld nltimately win, should have and always keep 
this higher view of the relations of success and failnre 
which we have said must have been in Jesus. Here are 
yon, for instance, wrestling with yonr special sin, with 
that old enemy whom you carry abont with you, bound 
up in the selfsame heart with all your best aspirations 
and desires. Every special effort that you make to con- 
quer that sin fails. Every time you try to be true you 
are liaK false. Every time you try to be spiritual the 
carnality about you beats you back. Every time you set 
up the white banner of purity the dark clouds of lust 
gather around it and it is well-nigh lost. Do you not 
know the picture ? — the weary sense of being beaten 5 
the old familiar disappointment that comes back at the 
close of the day, when you let your hands drop and say, 
" Well, once more my sin has been too strong for me ! '^ 
What can be done? We know how to some men it 
seems as if nothing were to be done here ; as if a total 
change of all conditions must occur before a man could 
have any chance against his sins. Some men seem to 
dream of heaven as if there only the soul of man could 
come to any great success ; as if until it came there it 
must always be a losing fight. But the best and most 
faithful men have always had a truer thought. Out of 
God's revelation and their own experience it has been 
shown to them that a life might be succeeding in the 
struggle after goodness even while every effort of the 
man who lived that life to be good fell so far short of 
what he wanted it to be that he could call it nothing but 



202 FIFTH SUNDAY IX LENT. 

a failure. The purpose, the consecration, of the life to 
God and goodness is its tide. The special struggles to 
do good things are the waves. The deep, persistent, 
and unchanging hate of the peculiar sin, which is deter- 
mined never to be reconciled to it and to fight against 
it till it dies — that is the soul's success, which does not 
falter or stop, and which carries along upon it all the 
partial failures of which the life is full. 

I am sure that I speak to the consciousness of some of 
yon, my friends, when I speak thus. Do you not know 
what it is to be failing every day, and yet to be sure — 
humbly but deeply sure — that your life is, as a whole, 
in its great movement and meaning, not failing, but suc- 
ceeding ? You want to do that best work that a man 
can do — to make life brighter and nobler for your fel- 
low-men. Not a day passes in which you do not some- 
how try to do that blessed work ; but every time you 
turn away after one of those attempts to give sympathy 
or inspiration to your brethren, how your heart sinks, 
so cold and so ignoble are the words which you meant 
to be so generous and warm ! And yet all the while 
you know that the whole life does not fail. Still there 
is the purpose ! It does not die. It is not given up. 
It presses forward, wounded and bleeding, but more 
and more determined every day. Every day it grows 
clearer and clearer to you that without that wish and 
hope and resolution life would not be worth living. 
You want to be absolutely true. But see ! the account 
which you gave of yourself yesterday told only half the 
truth. The day before you could not bring your- 
self squarely to face the fact. Last Aveek you let a 
lie pass unchallenged and entered into silent partner- 



FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 203 

ship witli it. Nevertheless yon know that yon are grow- 
ing truthfnl, and the blessed day draws nearer when 
deceit shall be completely trodden nnderfoot. So it is 
trne of yon that in a deeper life which nnderlies yonr 
actions, in the life of resolntion and of consecration on 
which the life of action moves as the waves rnn back- 
ward often on the bosom of the still advancing tide — 
in that yon are sncceeding, even while again and again 
in special acts yon fail. 

I hear men say, " Oh, it is not so bad for me to drink, 
to steal, to lie, for I am not a Christian, I make no pro- 
fession, I have never pledged mj^self nor undertaken to 
live a holy life." They are all wr(mg. They are failing 
from top to bottom — failing all the way down. They 
are sncceeding neither in the special acts nor in the gen- 
eral purpose of their lives. The poor stumbling saint 
who through a thousand fal s and defeats keeps still the 
consecration of his life, and will be God's through every- 
thing, melancholy enough his broken and unworthy 
life may be ; but it is better, even so, than if he cast 
his consecration oif ; better, even so, than his brother's 
life beside him, who makes no consecration of his life 
and sins in wanton freedom and feels no self -rebuke. 

I know that I am treading here on dangerous ground. 
I know that I am deahng with ideas which men have 
terribly perverted and misused. But the ground is not 
to be abandoned because it is dangerous ; the ideas are 
not to be denied because of their misuse. This truth 
which I am preaching is no conceited antinomianism 
making believe that a man's sins are no sins for him if 
only his heart is pious and his general intentions good. 
Nor is it any silly and mischievous doctrine about evil 



204 FIFTH SUNDAY IX LENT. 

being only " good in the making " — a necessary stage in 
every man's i)rogressiou to the purer life. No ! Both 
of these ideas are bad. Sin is sin whoever does it. 
Sin is sin however ont of its poisonons heart may come 
some blessed medicine of penitence and watchfulness 
for the sonl that does it. Both of these doctrines are 
destructive. Sin is always bad — always a loss. The 
wave that seems to fail does fail. Only he who makes 
that truth the only truth of life and sees no other truth 
is leaving out the deepest truth, the truth in which re- 
demption lies. Not in the leaves, but in the root^ lives 
the tree's life. Not in the act, but in the heart, are the 
issues of life and death ; and failure ne^'er is total and 
complete till the heart tiu'ns a^^ay in obstinacy and sets 
its face toward evil. If you know that you have not 
done that, then, O my friend, however you have sinned, 
you have not finall^^ and. fully failed, and the door of 
success and hope stands open to you. 

It would be interesting, if we had time, to see at 
length how the principle of which we are speaking ap- 
plies to faith as weU as conduct. Many and many an 
attempt of yours to believe in divine things seems a fail- 
ure. Perhaps all evidence that you can find for their 
existence seems inconclusive and unsatisfactory. Per- 
haps, allomng fully their existence, every effort to get 
hold of them, to fix them close to. your life with any 
such grasp as could properly be called faith, aj)pears a 
failure. How many such discouragements there are ! 
How many special efforts to believe are just exactly like 
the reaching up of waves on to the shore, a struggle up- 
ward, a wild, convulsive, desperate reach forward, and 
then a falling back again into the bosom of the great 



FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 205 

ocean out of wLicli the ambitions and enterprising wave 
ventured to spring ! But yet we know that is not all 
the story. That great bosom of the sea itself is moving- 
shoreward, and the next ambitious, enterprising wave 
which tries its strength upon the shore will start from 
a sea-line more advanced, and will make a little higher 
record of itself upon the sand, before it too falls away 
— will fail a little farther on. Is there not something 
like that, also, in our experience ? We try to laj^ hold 
of a certain truth and we fail; but all the time there is 
in our soul a deep, simple, earnest craving after truth in 
general ; behind each special struggle after faith there 
is a constant faithfulness, and below our craving for God's 
special revelations there is a perpetual hungering and 
thirsting after God Himself. And that is alwaj'S mov- 
ing on, and every new attempt to know about Him starts 
from a higher level of the spiritual knowledge of Him, 
and so attains a little more satisfaction, before it too, 
in its turn, falls back into that inevitable failure which 
awaits every attempt of man to grasp and understand 
the things of God. This is the history of many a faith- 
ful life. Upon the bosom of a true faith in God, ever 
becoming more and more successful, ever pressing for- 
ward into greater clearness, are born and live the spe- 
cial efforts to attain the truths of God which never can 
succeed. They share the movement of the deeper faith 
on which they rest. They are lost and come totally to 
nothing if they tr}^ to live apart from that movement. 
But, living upon it, they are healthy and vital, and every 
time they fail they bring back their store of earnestness 
and zeal to add to the body of the larger and deeper 
faith out of which they sprang. It is in this constant 



206 FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 

consciousness at once of succeeding and of failing that 
the sonls most rich in faith live on year after year. 
" Lord, I believe ; help Thou mine unbelief," is their per- 
petual prayer. Humility and hope grow stronger to- 
gether in them every day. And life becomes at once 
more patient and more enthusiastic, more expectant of 
temporary failure and more certain of ultimate success, 
the longer that thej live. 

I am sure that it must help many of us if we can see 
how our truth is true, also, with regard to the matter of 
happiness and sorrow. There is a happiness so deep, a 
furnishing of the nature so profoundly with the condi- 
tions of joy, that it may bear upon its breast a hundred 
sorrows and yet be happy still. Alas if it were not so ! 
Alas if the perpetual presence of disappointed hopes and 
broken plans and severed ties were all ; if underneath 
them all it were not possible for a soul to carry in itself 
so true and rich a peace and contentment in the divinest 
things that it should know not merely that it was going 
to be happy some day or other, when the great change 
should come, but that it was happy now with a happi- 
ness that nothing could disturb ! 

And yet once more, I find in our truth of the double 
fact of life, the fact of deeper condition and the superfi- 
cial phenomena, the fact of the tide and the wave in all 
existence — I find in this the real key to the state and 
the prospects of the world at large. The world is grow- 
ing better — I know^ it. A great unceasing movement 
toward truth and goodness is carrying slowly forward 
ever the character of this great, mighty, mysterious 
humanity. How slow it is, but oh, how real it is, the 
study of the ages tells. And yet behold how the good 



FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 207 

causes fail. Behold how selfishness comes in to para- 
lyze each great endeavor for the good of man. Alas for 
him who only sees this surface fact ; who does not feel 
beneath it all the heave and movement of the whole race 
forward toward goodness, toward God ! To him who 
hears at once the tumnlt of moral failures all ai-ound 
him and the steady progress of the great moral success 
beneath him — to him the world becomes solemn and 
beautiful, pathetic and full of hope. For him despair- 
ing pessimism and silty optimism both become impos- 
sible. A divine optimism, which, while it dares not 
say, "Whatever is is best," devoutly says, ''The best is 
strongest and shall ultimately conquer aiid use CA'en the 
worst," becomes the habit of his life. Such was the 
optimism of Jesus. Such is the optimism of His dis- 
ciples if they catch His spirit. 

" Ye must be born again," said Jesus. I ponder these 
divine words of His, and ever more and more they seem 
to me immeasurabh^ deep. There is no end to them. 
To think of them is like gazing into endless space. But 
one great truth which they assuredly contain is this : 
that life for any man is not complete until a deeper 
and a higher life is put beneath and over the mere life 
of action, into which the soul can perpetually retreat, 
and on whose breast the life of action can be buoyantly 
upborne. There are men who the world thinks are al- 
ways failing who are themselves conscious of a success 
which is a truer truth to them than all their failures. 
They are the men Avho have been born again, and who 
carry the new life underneath the old life all the while. 
The Master of that new life is Christ. The soul worried 



208 FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 

and torn with, disappointmeiits, haunted by the taunts 
of fellow-souls which tell it it has failed, suspicious of 
itself, yet keeping still its faithfulness and consecration, 
goes to Him, to Christ, and lo ! it finds a new fact there. 
Below its failures He has for it success. Through all 
its deaths He brings out for it, as He brought out for 
Himself, life ! '* I too," He says, " seemed to fail, but 
in My Father I succeeded." "You shall share wdth Me, 
Ye are they which, have continued with Me in My temp- 
tations. And I appoint unto you a kingdom, as My 
Father hath appointed unto Me." 

Whatever failures He may have for us to pass through 
fii'st, may He bring us all at last to that success in Him. 



XIY. 
THE SUNDAY NEXT BEFORE EASTER. 

'•'And tliey that went before, and tliey that followed, cried, 
saying, Hosanna ; Blessed is He that eometh in the name of the 
Lord." — Mark xi. 9. 

It was the first Pabn Sunday and Jesus was coming 
to Jerusalem — that old picture which so mau}^ genera- 
tions have looked upon and studied. As He came the 
whole city was full of stir and tumult. Every element 
in it responded to Him who was approaching according 
to its natui'e. The simple-minded people came stream- 
ing out to meet Hun. The thoughtful, puzzled students, 
not hostile, with some degree of sympathy, sat at home 
listening to the tumult and wondering whether it could 
possibly be that tliis was " He of whom Moses in the 
law, and the prophets, did write " ; whether this uproar 
that thej^ heard streaming down the Mount of Olives 
and pouring into the city's eastern gate reall}^ could 
have anything to do with the old prophecy about ^^ the 
Lord coming suddenly to His temple." Those whom 
He had cured of sicknesses blessed Him anew as they 
heard of His approach. Those who had believed in 
Him felt their faith deepen at the sound of His triumph. 
Those who despised Him sneered anew at the people's 
Idol. '* Have any of the Pharisees believed on Him ? " 

209 



210 THE SUNDAY NEXT BEFORE EASTER. 

they said over and over to one another. The priests 
hugged their traditions closer and said, " There is noth- 
ing about Him here.'' The lordly Romans stalked by 
superciliously, hardly deigning to glance at the passing 
procession, only wondering what these absurd, fantastic 
Hebrews would do next. Each man according to His 
nature answered to the coming Christ. It was like the 
judgment-day. 

It would be easy to see in Jerusalem upon that day a 
picture of the way in which the world at large, with all 
its different classes of mankind, has always been judged 
by the approach of Jesus. It would be easy, and per- 
haps it would be interesting, to discover in the world 
full of men all of those different groups or classes which 
were in that city. But such a study would be too gen- 
eral. What I want to do rather than that is to see how 
our o^vn souls, the soul of each of us, is represented by 
Jerusalem, and how His Palm Sunday offer of Himself 
to His own city is repeated in the offer which Christ 
makes of Himself to every heart. Let us set our own 
soul on that rocky hiU and see Christ come to it. Long- 
heard of, not a stranger, having often passed before our 
sight, at last He comes finally and formally to claim us 
for His own, to solemnly assert that we belong to Him, 
to bid us make our choice whether we will take Him 
for our King or not. Such dajs do come to all of us — 
days when we feel as if the Saviour, who had been long 
tempting us, had gathered up all His power of appeal 
and expected to be then either accepted or rejected; 
days when the chance of the new spiritu.al life seems 
to stand with peculiar solemnity before our heart. Such 
days are to us what Palm Sunday was to Jerusalem. 



THE SUNDAY NEXT BEFORE EASTER. 211 

Our whole nature, like one great city, answers in re- 
sponse with many voices which vet make in the end one 
great decision. 

There is much in a human nature, in a human soul, 
that is like — at least, that may be fitly represented hy — 
the maryelou sly interesting life of a great city. There 
is the same mixture of many elements which yet make 
a true unity. In a soul, as in a city, there may be in- 
ternal conflict and dissension, while yet at any moment 
the distracted soul, like the distracted city, will turn as 
one being to resist an inyader from without. A man, 
like a city, has a corporate will, and does actions from 
which, neyertheless, much that is in him may dissent. 
The same sort of bewildered but yet true and effectiye 
personahty which is in a city is what thoughtful and 
earnest men are always recognizing in themselyes — a 
personality which, while it finds it yery hard to giye a 
satisfactory account of itself, yet accepts its duties, its 
responsibilities, its priyileges, is proud of itself and 
ashamed of itself as only a genuine person can be. 

Thus it is, then, that without too great fancifulness 
we may picture the approach of Jesus to our souls 
under the figure of His entrance into Jerusalem. He 
comes to one of us as He came to that city of His and 
of His Father's. Think how sacred it was to Him. 
Think how He loyed it. Think what yast precious pos- 
sibilities he could see sleeping behind its brilliant walls. 
There was His Father's temple. There was the whole 
machinery for making the complete manhood. And 
yet there was defiance, selfishness, unspirituality, and 
cruelty — the house of pra^^er turned into the den of 
thieyes. O my dear friends, if Christ, as He comes to 



212 THE SUNDAY NEXT BEFORE EASTER. 

any one of us to offer us His salvation, never forgets 
for a moment what we might be in the sight of what 
we are, and never forgets for a moment what we are in 
the vision of what we might be 5 if He always sees our 
sins in the light of our chances, and our chances against 
the shadow of our sins, then what Jerusalem s we must 
be to Him ! He loves us as He loved that city, with a 
love full of reproach and accusation. He stops as He 
comes in sight of us, and " beholds the city, and weeps 
over it." I can think of no picture which so lets me into 
the very depths of the soul of Christ as He approaches 
a soul of man which He longs to save as that which 
depicts Him stopping on the Mount of Olives, where 
Jerusalem first comes in sight, and beholding the city, 
and weeping over it. 

But I want to speak not so much of what is in His 
soul as of what is in the soul to which He comes. It 
cannot be indifferent to Him. And there does not come 
out one clear, simple utterance of reception or rejection, 
any more than Jerusalem was unanimous and prompt to 
receive or to reject the Saviour when He came to her. 
From the soul, as from the city, come various answers, 
uttering the various portions of its complex life. See 
what some of them are : 

1. And first there is in every soul something that 
spontaneously welcomes Christ. It has been always so. 
It makes the basis to which the power of the Saviour 
always immediately appeals. There is a childlike ele- 
ment in every heart, a deep and underlying freshness of 
perception, to which when He, that bright, strong, divine 
Presence, is presented, it immediately knows Him and 
goes out to meet Him, as the children and the common 



THE SUNDAY NEXT BEFORE EASTER. 213 

people streamed out on Palm Sunday to meet the com- 
ing Christ. There is something of the child, something 
of the common humanity, in every man. And there is 
something, too, of discontent, something of a sense of 
unfulfilment. There is a Simeon and Anna part always 
in the temple of our souls. There is a readiness to hear 
any voice that promises release and the lifting of hori- 
zons and the dawning of a larger day. And, deejjer still, 
there is an aching consciousness of wickedness that is 
a mixture of despair and hope, hut alwaj^s has more of 
hope in it than despair ; there is a sense of sin wanting 
forgiveness. All this part of our nature, the child part, 
the need}^ part, not yet drilled into submission and 
content, this part which either by loftiness or lowness 
is ready for new things (for I suppose that the company 
which brought Jesus down the Mount of Olives had in 
it the noblest and purest and also the most sinful and 
wretched souls in all Jerusalem) — all this part of us it is 
that spontaneously welcomes Jesus, cr^dng, " Hosanna 5 
Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord." 

I think that we are always somew^hat puzzled and sur- 
prised when we set ourselves to realize how Jesus ap- 
peared among His generation in Jerusalem, and what 
sort of people it was that He primarily attracted to Him. 
In the best sense of the word He was a radical. He 
went Himself, and carried all who would go with Him, 
to the roots of things ; and when reform was needed 
He always would begin it there. His religion has been 
so long identified with conservatism — often with con- 
servatism of the obstinate and unyielding sort — that it 
is almost startling for us sometimes to remember that 
all the conservatism of His own times was against Him, 



214 THE SUNDAY NEXT BEFORE EASTER. 

that it was tlie young, free, restless, sanguine, progres- 
sive part of the people who flocked to Him. The Church 
of our day has to be on her guard against those who 
seek her for the mere shadow of her established respec- 
tability. Jesus, in His day, had to send away more than 
one who came to Him as if He were the mere prophet 
of discontent, the captain of a company of revolution- 
ists. Such a change in the whole attitude of men to- 
ward Christ every thoughtful observer sees. But still, 
changed as may be the aspect of the Church at large, 
in personal experience the old condition of the time of 
Jesus reappears. Out of the city of each man's heart it 
is the bright, young, free, hopeful element that starts up 
at His coming to bid Him welcome. Every man who 
truly becomes a Christian is an idealist then. Then, 
at that moment when he takes Christ in, he believes in 
the perf ectibihty of human life. The dry man of books, 
the dusty man of business, the old man crusted with 
the dreary years — they all grow young again ; the ever- 
lastingly young part in each of them asserts itself when 
they take Christ. The old, dry, dusty part of them has 
to stand aside. The everlastingly young part of them 
goes streaming out at the gates, up on the road that 
climbs the mountain, shouting, exulting, flinging down 
branches, spreading clothes for the pathway where the 
Christ is coming. This is one of the many meanings 
of the word of Jesus about the necessity of being born 
again, and of that other word of His about receiving 
the kingdom of God as a little child. 

2. This is the part in us that welcomes Christ. But 
now tui'n to some other parts in us and see how they 
receive Him, see how they correspond to other elements 



THE SUNDAY NEXT BEFORE EASTER. 215 

wliicli were there in tlie streets of Jerusalem on that 
Palm Sunday. There were skeptics there — groups of 
Sadducees who looked with a sort of superior pity upon 
the whole transaction. They turned aside to let the 
host sweep by, and then looked after it and shook their 
heads, with that sort of pity which is at the soul of the 
intensest pride. The pride that hates is never so in- 
tensely supercilious and proud as the pride that pities. 
And in our hearts who of us has not realized the pres- 
ence of that sort of pride ; who of us has not found the 
skeptical part of himself pitying the faithful part of 
himself for what it counted the childish folly of being 
inclined to accept a supernatural Redeemer ? If I could 
open the history of your closets I could find there what 
I mean. When have you prayed to Grod so completely, 
with such perfect sense of His nearness and His love, 
that right alongside your faith, mixed with, it in the 
same heart as part of the same nature, there has not 
been something of self-pity — a superior, indulgent sort 
of toleration of j^our own weakness in needing to pray 
and in venturing to pray ? Surely there are many souls 
here who know that experience. Many and many a time 
the child in us prays while the man in us stands by 
and pities. The bright, simple, spontaneous impulses go 
out toward God, fly up to heaven, while the dull, earth- 
bound habits cling to the ground and look after the 
aspiring desires with a kindly and supercilious admira- 
tion, as the man standing firm upon the earth looks after 
the birds flying up into the sky. And so if it is not 
prayer, but obedience. There is a part of us that tries 
to obey our Master, Christ ; tries to do right because it 
is His will. But when we are called upon in any way 



216 THE SUNDAY NEXT BEFORE EASTER. 

to give an account of our efforts after righteousness, how 
quickly another part of us springs forward and hastily 
flings a veil of lower motive over this devotion and per- 
sonal obedience, as if it were ashamed of it ! You do 
some good deed simply because you really w^ant to honor 
and obey your Saviour, and then you say, " Oh yes, I 
did it; I thought it was a wise, politic thing to do." It 
is the skeptical part of you disowning the faithful part 
of you. And so when one lives in God's communion, 
enjoys, dehghts in, day by day, the blessed society of a 
divine Master, and then says to himself, " Nay, but this 
peace, this hourly delight, who can say how much of it 
comes of a fortunate disposition, good health, and a 
successftd business?" Once more it is the skeptic in 
us poisoning the faith of the believer in us. And how 
close they lie to each other, crowded in together in 
this mysterious selfhood, that can be measured only by 
One who has realized what units these complex lives of 
ours really are ! 

Thus ever in the streets of our inner Jerusalem 
stands the Sadducee and watches and disbelieves and 
pities while our ready and simple faith welcomes Christ. 
Blessed is he in whom the simple faith presses on, un- 
dismayed even by his own self-doubt and self-scorn, 
until it has brought the Lord into the central temple 
of the heart and made Him Master there. 

3. But in Jerusalem on that Palm Sunday there were 
not only those who doubted Christ, there were some peo- 
ple, also, who hated Christ ; some people whom He in- 
terfered with 5 some people who felt that they could not 
live in the same city with Him — that either He or they 
must give way and go out. There were the Pharisees, 



217 



who saw in Jesus the contradiction of all their most 
treasured traditions and favorite ideas : and there were 
the sinners, whom He had rebuked for all their differ- 
ent kinds of sin — the cheats, the liars, the blasphemers, 
the haters, the inipnre, the wicked men of every sort. 
The Pharisee said, '• If what tliis Teacher says is true, 
all that I say is false." The sinner said, ''If what this 
Master commands is right, my life is horrible.'' Be- 
tween each of these men and Jesus there was war to the 
death. One cr other of them must peld or die. What 
shall we say ? Is there any analogy here ? If there is 
in your heart at this moment any hard, proud, selfish, 
narrow notion of religion which you would have to see 
cast doAvn and trodden underfoot before the breadth and 
the hnmihty of the Gospel faith could take entire pos- 
session of your soul, then, teU me, have you not within 
you an element which corresponds exactly to what the 
Pharisees were in Jerusalem ? And if you are living 
in sins of any sort which are deliberate and obstinate, 
which you do not mean to give up, and which Christ 
hates, with which He cannot live, then there is that in 
you which hates Christ. For hate is not merely an ex- 
cited emotion ; hate is a moral antagonism. Sin and 
goodness always must hate each other, like darkness and 
light. Still you may love Christ, too, at the same time ; 
for, with aU your unity, you are this mixed Jerusalem. 
Still you may love Christ, ctcu while you hate Him. 
You have had little of the deepest experience of life if 
you have not learned long before this that all the strong- 
est powers are capable of holding us with a double gi'as}?, 
making us hate and love them at the same moment. 
The noblest man, until you unreservedlv vield vourself 



218 THE SUNDAY NEXT BEFORE EASTER. 

to his nobleness, is a provocation to your wrath and to 
your love together. It is both the anger and the joy 
with which he fills you that blend in the fascination of 
his presence. And so Christ may be hated by the part 
of our nature wdth which He interferes and which will 
not yield to Him, with a hate all the deeper for the ardent 
affection with which at the same moment another part 
of our nature is rejoicing in His love. The conflict, the 
struggle, of such a divided nature no one can describe. 
Some of you remember it; nay, some of you are in the 
midst of it.. It is raging underneath the quiet faces that 
you wear before your brethren. It breaks out when 
you are alone. Your midnight watches have seen its 
tumult. Oh, how anxiously the Christ whom a heart's 
love is carrying to His temple must watch the love that 
carries Him, and give it His strength, that it ma3'' not 
be frightened or dismayed when it has to carry Him 
right through the shadow of a hate which is part with 
it of the same human nature ! 

4. There is one other element in the population of 
Jerusalem whom I want to make you see. I never can 
think of that strange city in the time of Jesus without 
seeming to see stalking about among the native Jewish 
people w^ho were perfectly at home there the figures of 
the Roman soldiers who constituted the garrison with 
which the conquerors held the now subject city. Tall, 
strong, coarse, rugged frames they wore, and as they 
walked the streets a brutal insolence mingled with a 
superb contempt in the cold curiosity with which they 
scrutinized the strange people whom they had been sent 
to guard. They were foreigners, but here they held 
the natives in subjection. They had no s^anpathy with 



THE SUNDAY NEXT BEFORE EASTER. 219 

the mysterious spiritual associations by which they 
found themselves surrounded. They were wholly of 
the earth. All they wanted was to keep the peace, to 
prevent an outbreak. Truth, spirituality, eternal life — 
all these meant nothing to them. They were mere power 
and mere system, earthly order embodied, as they stood 
watching Christ's procession through the streets on Sun- 
day, or as they dragged the same Christ to His cross on 
Fi'iday. What better picture could 3'ou have of that 
which so many men know only too well as a true ele- 
ment in their internal life f Hard earthly prudence ; 
a coarse terrestrial corner of our nature, to which all 
spiritual truths seem to make their appeal in vain ; an 
iron unsiisceptibility to all enthusiasm ; a disposition to 
organize life upon its lower plane, and to think of re- 
ligious impulses and aspirations only as the disturbers 
of the peace ; materialism ; selfishness ; reason boasting 
itself of its confinement to its most terrestrial activities ; 
the tyranny of sense — oh, what an element that is in all 
of us ! How terrible it is in some of us ! With what 
cold eyes it gazes on this grand, sweet, mystic Christ, 
who comes to claim the nature for His servant ! With 
what ruthless, pitiless cruelty it leads him to His suffer- 
ing, and sits down at the foot of the cross where it has 
hung Him, gambling for His clothes ! 

I think we grow to dread this element in ourselves and 
in our brethren more than almost any of the others ; 
more than the doubt that pities, and the selfishness 
that hates the Christ — this hardness on which it seems 
as if He could make no impression ; this Roman part of 
us which seems to have nothing to do with the Christ 
whom the better and softer part of our nature serves. 



220 THE SUNDAY NEXT BEFORE EASTER. 

Often we forget the sneer of the Saddncee and the hate 
of the Pharisee when our eve is caught and fastened by 
that stonv stare of the Roman soldier, too utterly cold 
and far away from all that we hold dear to feel either 
anger or scorn. And it is terrible when we find him 
even in ourselves. 

These are the elements, then. Understand that I have 
been trying to describe, not the way in which many dif- 
ferent men receive Clirist, but how in one same man all 
these receptions are united. So Jesus came into Jeru- 
salem. He came at once as an Intruder and a King. 
There were men along the streets who owed to Him the 
straightness of theii' limbs, the sight of their eyes, the 
clear, sane reason of their brains. They made the old 
streets ring with shouts of welcome. There were other 
men whom He had disappointed and defeated. He had 
trampled on their traditions, contradicted their doc- 
trines, spoiled their trade. With muttered curses they 
saw Him go by in His triumph. What a confusion ! 
The city was divided against itself. But through it all 
Jesus held on His way, claiming the town for His town 
because it was His Father's. Whether it owned His 
claim or spurned it, whether it welcomed Him or cm-sed 
Him, through the niixed tumult of its welcome and its 
curses He went on His way, claiming it all for His own. 
And so He claims our hearts. An Intruder and a King 
at once He seems to those hearts as He stands there on 
their threshold. There is something in every one of 
them that says to Him, " Come in, come in ! " There is 
something, too, in every one of them that rises up at 
His coming and says, " Begone, begone ! We will not 
have this Man to rule over us." But through their 



THE SUNDAY NEXT BEFORE EASTER. 221 

tunnilt, their struggle, Christ, whether He be King or 
lutruder, whetlier He be welcomed or rejected, goes on 
His way, pressing on into each heart's most secret 
phices, chiiniing always that He and He alone is the 
heart's King. 

And the struggle in any heart cannot keep on evenly 
balanced forever. Every heart has to decide. Jeru- 
salem had to decide. Before the week was over she 
had decided. On Friday she crucified Christ. Still 
even round the cross there w^as love and faith and lam- 
entation. But tlie}^ were crushed and only heard in 
sobs. The hatred had triumphed, and Jerusalem had 
crucified her King. And so must every Jerusalem de- 
cide. So must your heart say finally to Jesus, ^' Come " 
or " Go." He never will go until you obstinately bid 
Him. He cannot come into the inmost temple until 
you welcome Him. 

Do I talk parables ? Let me speak plainly as I can. 
The moment that you trust Christ's. forgiveness, and in 
profound gratitude give yourself to His service, cast- 
ing every reluctance and doubt aside, that moment He 
begins the purification and salvation of yom- life which 
shall go on throughout eternit}^ May some one, may 
many of you, do that to-day. 



XV. 
PASSION WEEK. 

"Now is My soul troubled ; and what shall I say? Father, save 
Me from this hour. But for this cause came I unto this hour. 
Father, glorify Thy name." — JoHX xii. 27, 28. 

These words belong to this week. They were spoken 
on that fii'st Palm Sunday when, in the meekness of 
His majesty, riding over the garments of the people and 
the fragrant branches which they flung upon His path- 
way, the Saviour came up to Jerusalem to die the death 
which we have commemorated to-day. We have a 
right to-day to all the lessons they can teach us. And 
their lessons are most valuable if we can only find them. 

For these words are full of the humanity of Jesus. 
" Here is a man like me, fearing death just as I fear it,'^ 
says the plain man who reads them. You would be sur- 
prised to see how the men who write the commentaries 
have labored to make it out that it was something else, 
and not the death just before Him, which Jesus shrank 
from ; to take away, that is, the very sense of Christ's 
perfect human nature which is the precious boon these 
verses have to give. No doubt there were other things 
to make the Saviour sad even as He rode through the 
hosannas which welcomed Him to His own city; but 
what this verse tells me is that He dreaded to die, and 



PASSION WEEK. 223 

tliat liuman di-ead I claim and treasure as a proof of His 
humanity. Death was not yet conquered by His death, 
and He, the true man, shrank from man's tja^ant. 

Our text is the history of a conflict. We can see in 
it the struggle that goes on in Jesus' nature. Here He 
was at the very foot of the mountain on which He was 
to die. But He was completely, intensely alive. I thiiik 
we must all feel Avhat a strange truth there is in the old 
traditions of art, which make our Lord to have been 
physically the most perfect and beautiful of the sons of 
men. He was the Son of Man, the Lord of life. We 
feel instinctively that hfe must have been in Him the 
most complete thing possible. And if life were preemi- 
nent in Him, then the love of life, too, must have as- 
serted itself preeminently, and even in the midst of all 
His sufferings and sorrows the Lord must have clung to 
life and dreaded death with all the power of that great 
unreasoning instinct which has always made the most 
miserable of li^-ing things wail as if at a new misery 
when you threatened it with death. This was Christ's 
position here. He stood in the present. He was part 
of, ruled by, the present. Death, with its untold agony? 
the one unknown which the Omniscient Immortal could 
not know, stood up before Him. He trembled at it. 
" Father, save Me from this hour," He cried out. Then, 
as if that cry to His Father lifted Him up to the divin- 
ity which He shared with Him, He looks back over His 
eternal history and rebukes Himself : "But for this cause 
came I unto this hour. What am I doing? What am 
I saying? Shrinking from death when I was born to 
die ! Refusing agony when toward this agony all My 



224 PASSION WEEK. 

joy has pointed ! " He looked back, and lo ! all His 
endless life had been busy setting up this cross. He 
had been traveling to this result for ages. Should He 
shrink from it now that He had reached it ? And then 
the whole tone changes, and He who had cried, '^ Father, 
save Me from this hour," cries instead, ^' Father, glorify 
Thy name." 

It is the genuine history of a genuine struggle. It is a 
memory of the temptation, and an anticipation of Geth- 
semane. I love it for its genuineness ; for if Christ's 
human life be the type of the life of all humanity, then 
this struggle of His must be the perfect struggle, rep- 
resenting ours. It m ust include the way in which, all 
men, from the assertion of a human repugnance, pass 
by degrees into an anxiety that God should glorify His 
name. It teaches us in general the method of all duty, 
or the process by which any man is led from an unwill- 
ingness to a willingness to do or bear God's will. Let 
us give it our study to-day from this point of view. We 
are standing to-day, as it were, waiting by the cross 
where Jesus died. If His death is to be indeed the in- 
spiration of all the duty of our lives, we may not forget 
that both in Him and in us duty comes out of struggle. 

This struggle of Christ, then, teUs us first of all the 
truth that all duty must be its own revealer. No man 
comprehends any work that God has for him to do till 
the coming task brings its own light with it. How 
strange it was ! After looking it in the face for years 
on earth, for ages in His eternal purposes, the death, 
when it came, seemed to take the Saviour by surprise, 
to cower and scare Him with its suddenness. But as 
with Him, so it nnist always be. No man can know a 



PASSION WEEK. 225 

duty till it lights itself up with an immediate necessity, 
and then it will almost always surprise and awe him 
with its unexpected presence. We have all seen men 
led of God up to something which they have got to do. 
No matter what it be — the giving up of some bad habit, 
we will say, the adoption of some new self-sacrificing 
mode of hie, the lifting of one of those heavy bundles 
of outward disesteem or inward sorrow which God lays 
sometimes in the middle of a man's path for him to take 
up and carr}^ on his bent back thenceforth until he dies 
— no matter what it be, a man never meets a great duty 
of the active or the passive sort that it does not take 
him by surprise. He shrinks from it — tries bj^ an in- 
stinct not to see the sword that God. holds down to him 
with its handle toward his grasp ; tries to get round the 
burden in his pathway that he dare not lift. '' These 
things are not for me," he says. " My life is not strung 
to great achievement or great patience. My heart is 
not heroic. I am well enough for little work 5 I shall 
fail here. O Duty, go and find some other soul to dare 
thee. I would, but I cannot. O God, I am too weak ! 
Let me go free ; I cannot lift Thy burden. Father, 
save me from this hour." It is the history of all great 
action. There never yet was a reform but the reformer 
halted first before his work. The world heard after- 
ward his bold and resolute words falling like hammers 
on the sins that he rebuked, and never guessed how he 
had pleaded with God across the pages of His inexorable 
Bible to send another to set Europe in a tumult, and 
not him. There never yet was a battle for humanity 
but the great captain God had chosen walked his tent 
all the long night before, and prayed to be released, and 



226 PASSION WEEK. 

trembled when he saw the sunrise. Never a Moses came 
up yet singing his triumph at the head of his hosts, 
through the piled waters of the conquered sea^ but that 
same voice that sings the Jubilate has begged beside the 
burning bush of his election that another and not he 
might speak to Pharaoh and bring the people out. So 
it is always. All great duty is a great surprise to the 
soul that must do it, and blinds him first of all with its 
bewildering light. He stands in the new glory with his 
hand before his eyes and cries, " Father, save me from 
this hour." But afterward this light becomes a reve- 
lation. To the Moses or the Luther on whom the task 
is laid the splendor of the task becomes at last familiar, 
and he is able to look back and see how the past is all 
lighted up by it, and in its light he can see that it has 
been the centering point toward which the currents 
of his unconscious experience have all been flowing. 
Moses still trembles at the river he must cross ; but he 
can see now that he was made to cross the river. The 
bulrushes and the king^s palace and the bush on the 
hillside were all for that. Luther still dreads to speak 
the first word that is going to defy the Church ; but he 
is overcome with a conviction that the Lord wants His 
false Church defied, and has made him, Luther, and 
none else, to defy it. Each hushes the remonstrance as 
he looks back on the past. The danger seems no less. 
The Red Sea is just as deep, the pope is just as intol- 
erant, as ever; but now each says, "The Lord who 
brought me here, if I am to perish, must have purposes 
in my perishing too vast for me to know. I am here 
with the pressure of my preparatory experience push- 
ing me on. I must do this duty, if I die ; for I see now 



PASSION WEEK. 227 

that there are ends higher than my hfe. My soul is 
troubled ; and what shall I say ? Father, save me from 
this hour. But for this cause came I unto this hour. 
Not that — some higher prayer ! " And then the soul that 
duty has enlightened looks up to God, the new, strange 
work, be it for life pr death, is seized most resolutely, 
and the soul passes into a new petition : " Father, glo- 
rify Tliy name." 

Such is the method of all duty. The great sun rises 
on the world and finds it dark. It stands upon the hori- 
zon and shrinks from its vast task. It hesitates and 
trembles. ''Father, save me from this hour." But 
then its past grows luminous behind it. It has climbed 
these toilsome steps and reached this margin-line just 
''for this cause" — just that it might light this great 
dark world. That purpose brought it where it is. It 
must not shrink now; and so into the heart of the 
darkness, roUing the flood of conquering splendor be- 
fore it as it goes, vanquishing the night with the victori- 
ous day, the great sun goes its way, honoring its Maker, 
daring all things at His word, writing its new prayer 
up and down the gorgeous sky : " Father, glorify Thy 
name." 

Such is the method of all duty, not only for Moses 
and for Luther, but for you and me. For duty is ter- 
rible, of course, as it relates itself to the measure of per- 
sonal strength — terrible for Daniel to dare the whole 
court of Darius and pray three times a day to his own 
true God; just as terrible for a school-boy to dare a 
little school-boy like himself and say his prayers under 
the terror of an unseen sneer. But each in our own 
degree we have all come up to some great duty of our 



228 PASSION WEEK. 

life which took us by surprise and cowed us. We 
looked up to God appealingly. ^'Father, save me from 
this hour." Then very wondrously the revelation came ; 
our past, our education, became clear. Lo ! it is right 
up to this duty Grod has been leading me. Lo ! for tliis 
cause came I to this hour. What thpn ? It seems a ter- 
rible thing. It seems as if I could not survive it. But 
Grod must have had some purpose somewhere — if not for 
me, then for Himself ; if not in my surviving, then in 
my perishing. Let me be satisfied. Let me learn the 
better prayer, ^' O Father, glorify Thy name." Blessed 
is the life that thus completes the method of all duty. 

It is even more evident with the passive than with 
the active duties. No duty of doing frightens and dis- 
mays the human soul like the duty of mere suffering. 
I know nothing that will so cow and crush a strong, 
well man, with the red blood riotous in his full veins, 
as a certain conviction coming suddenly upon him that 
his strength is to be taken from him ; that he is to be 
a poor, miserable, dependent invalid all the rest of his 
days until he dies. Nothing makes a man cry out to 
die like that. It is the most terrible sight one ever sees. 
A man is the strongest among men one day, doing every 
duty in his rampant strength ; the next day the accident 
has come or the disease has smitten him, and he hes 
down on his bed which is to be his home, never to rise 
and walk among men on earth henceforth forever. We 
in our health cannot begin to guess the blank of his poor 
soul. Nothing is left — no hope, no strength, no energy ; 
nothing but miser}^ to wail out his forlorn and friglit- 
ened cry : '^' Father, save me from this hour." And then 
it is the most beautiful sight one ever sees. As the 



PASSION WEEK. 229 

man lies there iu his misery, out of the darkness comes 
his past and reads itself to him. Each bright old year 
of health comes with its message of Grod's unforgetting 
love. Each strong deed of his vigorous youth turns to 
an angel, bringing him and laying at his bedside the 
trust which it accumulated. He slowly sees that all the 
past of active duty was stocking his life with the graces 
that should fit him for these slow years of suffering duty. 
This bed of ^^n-etchedness was the result to which every 
path of education led. Slowly his soul accepts the les- 
son. "Father, save me from this hour. Nay, for this 
purpose came I unto this hour. Father, glorify Thy 
name." Then the hands drop patiently from their re- 
sistance. The meek lips are put up to taste the bitter 
cup. The life grows happy in its new enhghtenment 
of pain. 

" ' Glory to God, to God ! ' he saith ; 
^Knowledge by suffering eiitereth, 
And life is perfected by death.' " 

So of bereavement and poverty. So of every cross 
the life is called to bear. Every cross, since Christ the 
Light hung upon His, is a light-giver. O sufferer with 
any nameless agony, rejoice if thy cross lightens thy life 
as thy Sa^dour's did His. If it lets j^ou see the higher 
end of life — that men and women were not born to live 
daintily and sail smooth waters kissed by sunny winds, 
but to bring praise to G-od, to let their Father glorify 
His name in them ; that the life in which this is attained 
is the successful life — if this has been revealed to thee 
by suffering, rejoice and glory in thy every pain as 
Elijah must have gloried in the fiery horses that bore 
him up to Grod. 



230 PASSION WEEK. 

But what shall we say then? Is this the creed we 
come to — that Grod's glory beiug the final cause of all 
things, He, the Maker, jnst sits forever in His glory 
and arranges the world's scenic play for some vast 
selfish exhibition of Himself, putting the precious lives 
of men into the fire to light up with theii' death-flames 
the splendor of His life, making ready for eternal burn- 
ing a vast hell where souls should blaze forever, that 
their agony might glorify the everlasting throne on 
which He sits? Is human happiness nothing? Are 
we the puppets and the pawns of some design outside 
ourselves with which we have no sympathy, which we 
dimly caU Grod's glory ? That were a heathen thought. 
That is the brutal religion of all heathenism — the re- 
ligion of the Ganges and the old Druid woods. 

There was a heathen old theology once, in Christian 
times and lands, which used to test its converts with this 
strange demand : " Would you be willing to be damned 
if it were necessary for the glory of God ? " Think of 
some earnest soul just won by the lovehness of Christ, 
and glorying in its new hope of service here and heaven 
hereafter, vexed, and thrown back, and made desperate 
and miserable by the brutal blasphemy of such a ques- 
tion. Hundreds and hundreds were. Surely Christ's 
own desire for His Father's glory in His suffering clears 
all such foggy questions away for us. We accept in 
Him, as seen in our text, a genuine struggle. There 
is a distinct advance from the first repugnance of the 
flesh to the final submission of the spirit. And we see, 
too, how that advance was accomplished. He looked 
back and saw the procession of His destiny, the whole 
design of His nature tending to just this one result. 



PASSION WEEK. 231 

He remembered the unspeakable solemnity of the day 
when, over the ruin of tlie fallen world, He, the pitying 
Saviour, when no redeemer could be found, stood and 
said, " Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God ! " He entered 
back into His union with the Father, He identified 
their lives again. His soul mounted up and stood by 
God's soul and looked over the eternal purposes with 
Him. And only then in tliis identification, seeing that 
the Father's gior}^ must be His advantage too, must ful- 
fil His most treasured plan — only then did His new sub- 
mission utter itself: ''Father, glorify Thy name." 

And as with Jesus so with every sufferer; so with 
all self-sacrifice. Self-sacrifice which stops as such is a 
poor thing, good for nothing. Man is made to be happy 
and to seek happiness. The only difference of men is 
that some seek low happinesses and some seek higher. 
He seeks the highest who mounts up to God's stand- 
point and says sublimely, ''God made me for some 
duty. To do that duty, to fulfil that end, must be my 
nature's highest perfectness, and so my nature's high- 
est joy. But to fulfil that end must be a glory to the 
God who made me. What then ? If I can stand where 
He stands, seek the same purposes, own .the same laws, 
then we must love together, hate together, hope to- 
gether, work together with one same ambition. Then 
His glory must be m}^ good ; my good His glory. The 
two no more conflict than the tree's good and the sun's 
glory on its leaves. The more the good tree grows, the 
more the glorious sun extends his glory over a wider 
world of leaves. God and my soul are one ; and when 
you ask me if I would sacrifice my best good to His 
best glory I smile at the ignorance of your poor ques- 



232 PASSION WEEK. 

tion. Why vex your brain conjecturing impossibilities ? 
The two are one. I know I conld not sacrifice my good 
unless I sacrifice His glory too." 

Whatever other error onr theology contains, let it 
keep clear of this. Let it understand Christ and His 
mercy better. Self-sacrifice in itself, for itself, is noth- 
ing. God does not want it. It does Him no good, 
gives Him no praise, for yon to starve yourseK, unless 
it does 3^onr sonl some good. Then it does Him good, 
for His one earthly glory is in growing souls. Christ 
never asks me wantonly to lie down in the mire just 
that His chariot wheels may mount over me up to His 
throne. Oh no ! As it concerns me, there is no glory 
that my Saviour wins which I must not share. If He 
lives I shall live also. My life He bought He has bound 
fast to His, and in the confidence of my humility I know 
He will not enter on His kingdom without looking 
round as He goes in for the poor sinner to whom He 
spoke the promise, speaking from cross to cross, from 
His to mine. Whatever else we let go, let us cling to 
this — the necessary connection of our triumph with our 
Redeemer's. 

"This one thing I know: 
We two are so joined, 
He'll not be in glory 
And leave me behind." 

Does not this explain to us the whole theory of sub- 
missive prayer, making it very clear? There are two 
conceivable states of things in each of which prayer 
would be superfluous. In the first it would be needless, 
in the second it would be useless. Prayer would be 



PASSION WEEK. 288 

needless if man were entire master of his own good, sole 
and sufficient doer of what was best for him ; if human 
good, that is, were the one end of being, and man had 
within himself the wisdom and the power to attain it. 
On the other hand, prayer would be useless if man's best 
good were not considered in the government of things ; 
if God were just some great Oriental despot, absorbing 
iu His own selfish splendor all the purposes of His vast 
tributary realm. Pure humanitarianism and pure fatal- 
ism can neither of them pray. But let us have a world 
where these two purposes work on harmoniously, the 
Creator's glory and the creature's good being like 
sound and echo, like sunlight and reflection to each 
other; where every advance in one chronicles and re- 
peats itseK in the other. Let man by sovereign mercy 
be admitted into such an intimacy with his Ood, and 
then prayer — what is it ? What but the answer of the 
echo to the sound, the uttered sympathy of the one com- 
mon life, man responding to God's " Be happy, O my 
child ! " with an ever grateful and reverent ^' Be glorious, 
O my Father ! " As we go up higher in the new life 
prayer becomes less servile and so becomes more true. 
When the new life is finished, the sympathy complete 
in heaven, who can say what prayer will be 1 It will 
be what Christ's was, in His perfect humanity talking 
with the perfect Divinity to which it stood so neaT. 
There will be no wandering eyes, no hstless thoughts, 
no formal words, no hearts that pray because they must ; 
but souls alight with a new likeness shall leap into a 
new nearness to their God, and prayer be heaven to the 
perfected human life. God's glory and man's good — 
who will divide them there ? The struggle will be over 



234 PASSION WEEK. 

when oui" blindness clears away ; and when we want to 
ask the best boon for ourselves, what shall it be but 
that which we used to pray with groans and tears of 
hard submission : " Father, glorify Thy name " ? 

Two other suggestions or illustrations of our text 
remain, of which I will very briefly speak. The lesson 
of Palm Sunday, Christ in view of His death acceptiug 
His Father's glory as His own best good, will always be 
a spectacle full of instruction and help to dying men. 
The struggle which our Lord passed through will al- 
ways be the struggle of every life before it is reconciled 
to the necessity of death. Man loves to live and hates 
to die. It is not wrong. It is a part of his humanity. 
It is one development of his instinct of self-preserva- 
tion. I believe that with every well, healthy man, with 
work to do in the world, an intense desire to live and 
do it, an intense disHke at the thought of giving it up 
-and going away, is the healthiest and most Christian 
state 5 that any other condition is for him unhealthy 
and unchristian, however pious and devotional it may 
appear. When death rises up suddenly, full in the 
path of a live, vigorous man, and puts its cold hand 
out to draw him to itself, I believe the natural cry of the 
true human heart is, '' Father, save me from this hour." 
And even when sickness comes, and the work has to be 
laid aside, and the road is evidently inevitably sloping- 
downward to the grave, still the life fears to die. The 
last enemy has still his teiTors. Heaven is beautiful, 
but death lies between. Oh, if there were but some 
escape, some way to pass dr^^-shod over the river and 
be saints, otherwise than by the pain of dying ! And 



PASSION WEEK. 235 

then to the human soul, as to Christ's soul, comes the 
revelation. Death, as the Christian comes up near to it, 
shows what it really is — the gathering up of the issues 
of life, the sublime grouping and grasping together in 
God's great hand of all the results of one period of 
being, that they may be handed over into another. It 
is the concentration or bringing to a focus of all the 
forces of the first life, that they may thence be reex- 
panded and spread out into the second. It is the point 
to which all earth has been struggling, that it might 
thence embark for heaven. Let a man see this and all 
is plain. " Lo ! for this cause came I unto this hour," 
the soul cries out in the new revelation it receives ; " this 
is what I have been living for." As the scholar studies 
for his graduation, as the twilight hiu'ries to the dawn, 
so truly "hfe is perfected by death"; and in his new 
intelligence the man, not simply resigned to a necessity, 
but rejoicing in a privilege, lies and awaits his change, 
praying always, " Father, glorif}^ Thy name." 

Paul teUs of Christians who " through fear of death 
are all their lifetime subject to bondage." There are 
some men and women who haunt their lives and make 
them cheerless, for fear they will not be able to meet 
the king of terrors when he comes. I presume there are 
some such here to-day. Dear friends, learn from your 
Saviour that no duty reveals itself till we approach it. 
The duty of death, when you approach it, will light 
itself up, you may be sure, and seem very easy to your 
soul. Till then do not trouble yourself about it. To 
live, and not to die, is your work now. When your 
time comes the Christ who conquered death will prove 
Himself its Lord, and pave the narrow river to a sea of 



23G PASSION WEEK. 

glass for you to cross. The work of life is living, and 
not, as we are so often told, preparing to die, except by 
living well. 

And again, this general truth of the method of duty 
touches not merely the method of death, but even more 
directly the method of conversion. No man grown 
mature in sin comes easily from the darkness into the 
blinding and bewildering light of the higher hf e. Every 
soul cries out when it first sees the Saviour. Even 
when it owns Him it begs Him to depart, like the de^^ils 
among the tombs. ^' What have we to do with Thee, O 
Christ ? Art Thou come to torment ns before the time ? 
Father, save us from this hour." There are some such 
in this church. They ought to be Christians ; they know 
they ought to be, but they do not want to be. Jesus 
holds them only by the sheer spell of duty. They 
would hke to be away, but they cannot. His supreme, 
essential Lordship holds tliem where His love has failed. 
What shall they do ? I tell you, my dear friend, all you 
need is a little clearer light. "Father, save me from 
this hour; let me go unsaved." Is that your prayer? 
Why, for this cause — just that you might be saved — 
for this cause came you unto this hour ! If you would 
only look back you would see that it is no sudden 
emergency in which Christ has set you, but that in all 
your past life He has been evidently, though most un- 
consciously, leading you to Himself, and now only asks 
you to complete the process. He has been leading you 
in the dark, gently, tenderly, because your eyes were 
blind. Now His daylight dawns and you see whither 
He has led you; you see where He has set you — right 
at a duty^s door, right before some great unmistakable 



PASSION WEEK. 237 

obligation : of giving- np tlie world, of setting about 
Chi'ist's service, of becoming an open member of His 
Clinrch. ISo one can wonder — He does not wonder — 
that you shrink from the newness of the task. •' Father, 
save me from this hour." But you cannot escape it so. 
"For this cause came I unto this hour." And what 
tlienf The willing submission, soon or late, must 
come. "Father, glorify Thy name. Make of me, do 
with me, what Thou wilt." And then tlie weak handL 
are put out to push the heavy doors of duty back, and 
tlu-ough the light that lies upon the other side of them 
your submissive soul passes into the gradual heaven of 
obedience. That is the struggle and the triumph of 
God's best conversions. Grod grant it may be yours. 

This, then, is the lesson of our Master's struggle. 
The same Saviour who came in the morning over the 
Mount of Olives, heralded by hosannas, treading the 
palm-branches and the people's garments under His 
ass's feet — here He is in the evening struggling with 
His destiny, and leaving us an eternal pattern of stead- 
fastness : " Now is My soul troubled ; and what shall I 
say ? Father, save Me from this lioia\ But for this cause 
came I unto this hour. Father, glorify Thy name." 

It teaches us that struggle is not wrong. It is inev- 
itable. To be weak and tempted is not wicked. It is 
human — that is all. Jesus was tempted too. 

It is so hard to do right, you say. Yes, of course it 
is ; and the soul that tries to do right does wrong so 
constanth^ But then it is so glorious — glorious to do 
right through struggle 5 glorious to mount from the 
lower to the higher life, and seeing how God has bound 



238 PASSION WEEK. 

our perfection to His own, have but one confident prayer 
for both : not, " Father, save me from this hour " — from 
any hour, however hard it be — but "Father, glorify 
Thy name." 

And as to Christ when He prayed, so often to us, 
sharers not only of His struggle, but of His triumph, 
there shall come a voice from heaven, saying, "I have 
both glorified it, and will glorify it now again in thee." 
Who cannot dare all things and bear all things in the 
celestial courage of that promise ? 



XVI. 
THURSDAY BEFORE EASTER. 

" And He cometh, and findetli them sleeping, and saith unto 
Peter, Simon, sleepest thou? couldest not thou watch one hour?" 
— Mark xiv. 37. 

The disciples of Jesus failed Him jnst when He needed 
them the most. The end was drawing very near, and 
on this night before His crucifixion their Lord had 
taken Peter, James, and John into the garden of Geth- 
semane, and while He was wrestling with His agony 
they had fallen asleep. Once and again Jesus comes 
back to them and finds them sleeping. There is some- 
thing verv touching in the tone of disappointment and 
surprise with which He speaks to them. He knew 
them thoroughly. He knew man in general, and He 
had known special!}^ these three men, with their special 
characters and weaknesses, through all these last years 
of their life together. When He led them into the gar- 
den He must have seen the dimness gathering in their 
eyes, and known that they would go to sleep. But by 
and by, when He comes to them and finds them sleep- 
iui?, He is full of surprise. He seems to be as much sur- 
prised as if He had expected to find them wide awake. 
Is there not here a suggestion or reminder of how differ- 
ent are different kinds of knowledge ? There is a kind 

2.39 



240 THURSDAY BEFORE EASTER. 

of knowledge, a certain final sort of conviction, wLicli 
in the very nature of the case cannot come except by 
personal experience. However Jesus may know that His 
disciples will fail Him and sleep while He is strugglino- 
there is a perfect conviction of their weakness which can 
come to Him only when He actually sees them lying 
helpless on the ground ; and when that perfect convic- 
tion comes, however sure His knowledge may have al- 
ready seemed to be, it is a shock and a surprise. This 
is something that we can understand. There is a full- 
est knowledge of all the things which touch us closest 
which can come to us only with their actual touch. 
You know that something wliich you are going to do 
will certainly estrange from you one who has been your 
closest friend. You are perfectly sure that he wiR mis- 
understand you and cast you off as his enemy when he 
hears what you have done. But when you actnally 
see his angry face and feel his angr}^ words like blo'^'S 
poured out upon you, then it seems as if you had not 
known at all before what now comes overwhelming you 
with such surprise. You know, as it seems, with per- 
fect certainty, that the discontent which fills the land 
will make rebellion ; but when at last the rebellion 
comes, the signal-gun is fii-ed, and all the land is in con- 
sternation, your horror is as great as if the lightning- 
had fallen from a cloudless sky. Your friend is very 
sick. For days and days you know that he must die. 
You stand by his bedside listening for his last gasp. At 
last he dies ; and oli, you all know how suddenly death 
comes even to all those who think they are expecting 
it most surely. Of all these closest things there is a 
closest knowledo-e which cannot come until the touch 



THURSDAY BEFORE EASTER. 241 

is {xctually laid upon the quivering nerve. This truth 
seems to me to tln-ow hght upon some things in the ex- 
perience of Jesus which sometimes puzzle us. Did He 
know beforehand what was to happen to Him, or not f 
If He did, there is a look of flatness and imreaUty about 
His human life. It loses all the freshness and interest 
and spontaneousness which give our human lives their 
meaning and their charm. But if He did not know 
Avhat was to come to Him, did not know that John was 
going to follow Him, and that Judas was going to be- 
tray Him, and that Herod was going to mock Him, and 
that the Jews were going to crucify Hun, then where is 
His Avisdom and divinity ? Does not the truth, in part 
at least, lie here f — that there is a kind of knowledge of 
Judas's treason which not even Jesus can have till He 
feels the cold kiss of the traitor on His cheek ; there is 
a kind of knowledge of John's love which cannot come 
until He feels the disciple's head upon His bosom ; there 
is a knowledge of Herod's scorn and of the Jews' hatred 
which the divine heart cannot gather except out of the 
sneering lips and flashing eyes of His persecutors in the 
hour of their triumph. All the divine foresight with 
which through the ages Christ looked forward to His 
hfe on earth, and all the human surprise and thrill of 
pain and joy with which at last He met the events of 
that life when it arrived — both of these become plain, 
and not in any way contradictory of each other, as 
soon as we let ourselves discriminate between the know- 
ledge which is and the knowledge which is not possible 
without experience. 

And this helps us to understand perhaps another 
puzzle. We are tauglit to think — we cannot well help 



242 THURSDAY BEFORE EASTER. 

thinking — of Christ our Master as standing over ns 
and watching our lives, pleased when we are good, and 
disappointed, with a disappointment that seems to have 
some necessary mixture of surprise in it, when we do 
wrong. And yet how can this be, we sometimes think, 
if He knows all beforehand, if He sees perfectly and un- 
mistakably just how we are to yield to or resist every 
temptation of our lives? Must we not lose that whole 
dear and affecting picture of the Saviour waiting and 
watching anxiously to see what we will do with our 
lives, expecting and looking to see of the travail of His 
soul, glad when we do right, and sorry, with a true con- 
temporaneous grief, when we are wicked ? I dare not 
think that I can solve all that mystery — nobody can. 
But if what I have said is true, there certainly must be 
a certain kind of knowledge of your goodness or your 
sin which cannot come to Jesus until the goodness or 
the wickedness is actually done, no matter how surely 
He may have known before that you were going to be 
good or to be wicked. No prophetic foresight can steal 
the freshness from that moment when at last the actual 
fact becomes genuinely present in the world. Do right 
to-day, and, long as God has known and prepared for 
your victory over this particular temptation, it is still 
your privilege to know that God is glad. Do wrong to- 
day, and in some true sense, some sense in which the 
capacity of sorrow must be present in the perfect nature, 
God is sorry. For to God, as to us, all things of real- 
est, closest interest must come at last with a surprise 
and freshness, however long beforehand their coming 
has been known. 

I have dwelt longer than I meant upon this opening 



THURSDAY BEFORE EASTER. 243 

tlioug-lit of the surprise of Jesus at His disciples' failure. 
But it is tliat failure itself that I really want to study. 
Here, at the very crisis of His need, He found them 
wanting:. It was not simply that they fell asleep — that 
might be only physical exhaustion. Their sleeping was 
only a part of the experience of the whole night of their 
Master's trial. By and by, after a moment's outburst 
of Peter's fruitless anger, when he cnt off the high 
I)riest's servant's ear, they all forsook their Lord and fled. 
Drawn to Him still, even although he would not own 
Him, Peter still lingers aronnd the place where Christ 
is being tried, and there at last denies Him. Not one of 
them is ready to stand by his Master bravely and help 
Him carry His heavy cross from Gabatha to Golgotha. 
Only one of them — His best beloved, and the least un- 
faithful of them all — creeps to the cross's side and lin- 
gers there until the last. That ntter failure of the dis- 
ciples on the night of Christ's great trial is one of the 
strangest and most significant events in all the Gospel 
story. When He needed them most He looked for them 
in vain. When all the love and devotion and courage 
which He had been training in them were wanted for 
the instant's work they seemed to scatter into air. 
" Lord, I will follow Thee to death," the brave disciple 
had said with perfect sincerity immediately before. 
And when death loomed up in the distance and seemed 
to be coming down upon him he dropped his trembling 
hands and cried, " I do not know Him." 

Is it a story which we can understand anything 
about from our own experience? Certainly we can. 
Sometimes a crisis, a great demand, seems to concen- 
trate and intensify a resolution or a faith. What was 



244 THURSDAY BEFORE EASTER. 

vagae and half formed before sometimes becomes, as it 
Avere in an instant, under the pressure of a sudden need, 
solid, compact, and strong. The man who did not know 
how he could possibly meet the enemy to-morrow, when 
to-morrow comes, and the enemy stands clear before 
him, is often amazed at himself as he feels the courage, 
strong as a liou's, filling his heart. But everybody 
knows that there is another power in a critical moment 
which is just the opposite of this. Sometimes we have all 
felt how the moment of supreme need paralyzes instead 
of inspiring, and we are weak as water just when the 
moment conies when all the strength whicli we thought 
was crystallizing into iron in us is wanted for its work. 
It is easy and common enough to say, with this strange 
difference in mind, that the hour of need is the hour of 
test ; that all the strength which has been gathering in 
quiet hours comes to its trial in these hours of demand 
and shows what it is really worth. And no doubt there 
is truth in this ; but it is not the whole truth, for we 
know very well, from what we have seen in others, from 
what we have felt in ourselves, that the giving way of 
strength in the time of critical need does not by any 
means prove either that what seemed to be real strength 
was unreal and a delusion, or that the shock of the crisis 
has destroyed it so that it will not be seen any more. 
On the contrar}^, many of us have known that men who 
seemed to break down most completely under some 
strain upon their resolution or their faith have come 
out by and by all the more faithful and cou^rageous for 
their failure. Alas if it were not so ! Alas if every 
time that the strength of au}^ of us yielded under any 
task it were a certain sign either that what we had 



THURfc^DAY BEFORE EASTER. 245 

been calling strength was weakness, or that onr feeble 
strength had died of the overstrain ! It wonld fill our 
lives \^dth honrs of terrible despair if we had to believe 
either of these things. No, we have to feel that a time 
of critical demand for any power, a time of emergency 
which calls for the fullest exercise of any power, has a 
double function as regards the present possession of that 
power by the man to whom the crisis comes. It is both 
a test and an education. And the failure of the man 
to respond with the power to the need may mean, not 
necessarily that the man has not the power, though it 
must mean that his possession of it is imperfect, but it 
may mean, also, that the power in him is just exactly 
in that state where it needs the self -revelation and the 
rebuke which will come by this failure ; that it is in 
passage, as it were, from one condition into a higher 
condition; and that in this very .failure there may be 
the force which will produce its new birth and its 
higher life. 

There might be countless illustrations of this. Illus- 
trations win abound in every region where strains that 
are too strong for them to bear fall upon the courage 
or the principle of men or states or chui'ches. An at- 
tack is made upon a nation's central principle — on the 
idea by w^hicli she lives — in some great outbreak of re- 
bellion. When the nation reels under the shock, and 
trembles to her base, what does it mean? Certainly 
that she is not perfectly mistress of and perfectly mas- 
tered by her great idea ; but often, also, as we know full 
well, that she has just so far attained to her idea that 
she is ready to go on to a new degree of attainment, 
and that that new degree of attainment can be reached 



2-iG THURSDAY BEFORE EASTER. 

only through this apparent failure and the illumination 
and exposure which it brings. 

There are illustrations which will come more closely 
home to your own life. Some of you who are here to- 
day have known what it is to have your Christian 
faith so shaken that it seemed to be overthrown. Just 
when you needed that it should stand firm as a column 
set into the rock, so that you might chug to it with your 
smitten and trembling life, just then, to your complete 
dismay, you felt it begin to reel and totter, so that you 
had to struggle to hold it up at the very time when it 
ought to be strongly holding you. Some of 3'ou, I 
know, have come to understand the meaning of that 
experience. Certainly it meant that your hold upon 
your faith was not complete, but certainly it did not 
mean that you had no hold on faith. Rather it may 
have meant — it may be that you can see now that it 
meant — that your faith had grown just to that point 
where it was only by questionings which went to its 
very roots and seemed to leave nothing for it to stand 
upon, only by deep probings which exposed its weak- 
nesses and seemed to leave it no hfe at all, that it could 
pass up and on into a higher region of assurance and 
completeness. I know that there are some among you 
who look back now and clearly see that it was in some 
terrible time when they appeared to have no faith that 
God was really rebuilding the foundations of faitli 
within them for a new structure which now it is their 
daily joy to feel growing and growing. 

Now it is this second power of the faihire which 
comes at the critical times of life which seems to me 
to be the real key to the story of the apostles sleeping 



THURSDAY BEFORE EASTER. 247 

in the garden of Gethsemane just when their Master 
needed them the most. No doubt tlieir failure showed 
the weakness of their loyalty ; but in a still more real 
sense it was the education of their loyalty to Jesus. It 
seems to me that their devotion to Him had reached 
just the point where it was read}^ to become something 
a great deal higher and finer and more spiritual than it 
had been thus far, and that the only way in which it 
could really mount up and attain that higher life was by 
just some such failure and exposure as it went through 
upon that night of crisis. Certainly their failure to 
be true to Him had nothing wanton or deliberate about 
it. They were asleep. They did not plot against Him. 
Here is just the difference between Peter and Judas. 
Indeed, all through that night the disciples seem to 
me to be dazed and bewildered. They are like men 
stunned. They move about almost as in a dream. 
And if they fail of the duty for which brave men 
ought to be ready — as certainly they do — it is rather by 
their powers being, as it were, out of connection with 
their wills, as a man's are when he is dazed or dream- 
ing, than because they deliberately consider and choose 
with their wills not to use them. 

Now notice how common a condition this is between 
two periods in life, or in the development of any of a 
man's powers. How often in transition periods there 
seems to be a kind of temporary pause and inaction in 
the faculties which are just about passing over into a 
higher state and a completer use ! You have seen how 
a stream which has been flowing between sunny banks, 
lapsing along in peaceful, quiet current, and which is 
just going to enter on a new experience and be hurled 



248 THURSDAY BEFORE EASTER. 

headlong over the dam to fall white and tumnltnous into 
the depths below — yon have seen how, between the two, 
after its smooth journey through the sunny woods is 
over, and before its larger, more excited life begins, it 
pauses and lies motionless in a black, brooding pool, 
and seems in stillness to be making itself ready for the 
plunge. There are many such times as that in human 
life. Perhaps the time that seems most hke it comes in 
a young man's life when, his boyhood over and his ac- 
tive manhood not begun, he seems to pause and brood 
upon the brink of life, and something almost like paraly- 
sis seems to fall down upon his faculties of faith and 
action. I am sure that many of you will recognize the 
phenomenon which I describe. A human creature who, 
as a boy, has been full of activity, and who is going to 
be ful'er still of a yet higher activity in a few years as 
a man, comes to a stage between these two activities 
when for a longer or a shorter time he can do nothing. 
Before he easily made up his mind in an instant ; now, 
when the most important decisions are w^aiting to be 
made, he can make no decision. Before his convic- 
tions were as clear as sunlight ; now he is sure of noth- 
ing, least of all of his own doubts. Before he cared 
quickly about everything that touched him, was sym- 
pathetic and responsive ; now his interests are hard to 
waken and he is contemptuous about a great many 
things. Before he was easily hopeful ; now he finds it 
very easy to despair. It is not universal, but it is com- 
mon enough to make one try to understand its meaning. 
It is the pause of life before it starts on its full career. 
It is the perplexity and confusion before the opening of 
the higher certainty. It is the uncertain dusk between 



THURSDAY BEFORE EASTER. 249 

the starlight and the sunlight. It is the pool before 
the phmge. 

Now in a good many respects the disciples of Jesus 
seem to me to have been young men, just coming of 
age in their discipleship upon that night of confusion 
and distress, when they seemed to be so paralyzed and 
helpless. They had been children before, wide awake, 
observant of everything their Master did, ready to stand 
up for Him to any one w4io chose to question them. 
They were to be men by and by, alert to seek for truth 
or duty, compelling themselves with a man's conscien- 
tiousness to watch for their Lord's interests, and quick 
to answer out of a long experience and study all the 
taunts of scoffers and the earnest questions of in- 
quiring spirits. But now, betw^een the two, upon this 
night of terror, they were dazed and sleepy with the 
surprising change that was upon them ; and w^hen men 
asked them questions about Jesus they had nothing to 
say, or answered in confused and clumsy falsehoods. 
One hour Peter wants to fight for Jesus. A few hours 
later he is saying that he never knew Him. And al- 
most instantly after that he is prostrate in the darkness, 
weeping tears which are neither a child's tears nor a 
man's tears, but belong to that period of dismay and 
confusion, of terror at one's self and one's own possibil- 
ities, of tender-heartedness and wounded pride, of mis- 
ery, despair, and hope, all mixed together, which belong 
oxacth^to that strange period which comes between the 
childhood and the manhood and makes the most inter- 
esting and bewildering episode of many of the best 
human lives. I think that very many of the best young 
men, of those who by and b}^ make the best success of 



250 THURSDAY BEFORE EASTER. 

life, pass through a time when they and their lives seem 
to be wretched failures. And in their time of faihire, 
they often find afterward, has lain the seed of their 
success. It was in this night of failure that the seed 
lay of the spiritual success which these disciples gained 
when they had come to be completely men in Christ. 

To us who know the later history of these disciples it 
is quite evident what was the character of the change 
and progress which was taking place in them in those 
critical days of confusion and distress. In one word, 
they were passing on to a completer knowledge of 
Christ. Christ is so natural to the soul of man, so in- 
trinsically its true Master, that when a mau once knows 
Him and has to do with Him, the changes and progress 
of that man's life may afterward be all noted and mea- 
sured by his relationship to Jesus. And these disciples 
were attaining a growth, coming to a maturity, of which 
the sign and measure for us is the new and enlarged 
and deepened thought and understanding of their Lord 
which they attained. Perhaps that growth was not 
complete until the special gift of the Spirit of Christ 
had come to them at Pentecost. Perhaps, since all of 
Christendom is one long Pentecost, it is not complete 
yet, nor ever will be ; but it began and came to a full- 
ness which we can distinctly recognize in the experiences 
of that terrible night of which the sleep in the garden 
seems to be the representative event. Thej^ went into 
the cloud of that night with one knowledge of their Mas- 
ter. They came out of its darkness on the other side 
with another knowledge of their Master, which was 
larger and deeper. That new knowledge of Christ 
was, in one word, a more spiritual knowledge. It was 



THURSDAY BEFORE EASTER. 251 

a knowledge of the soul of Christ ; and the sign of its 
possession by the disciples was that thenceforth Christ 
was not localized for them as He had been. They were 
no longer dependent upon the actual seeing of Him for 
the assurance of His presence, and they y\"ere able to 
understand His relationship to all men — even those who 
were far removed from the special circumstances in 
which they had known Him. Henceforward tliey were 
able to trust Christ even w^hen they could not see Him, 
and to trust Him not merely for their own little group 
who stood the closest to Him, but also for all the world 
of men in every land, of every kind. 

How vast a change was there ! The promise and 
potency of all the profound spiritual life of souls com- 
muning with an unseen Christ, and of all the splendid 
faith and hope and work of man for the most hopeless 
of his fellow-men, lay in that change. And it was in 
the bewilderment out of which that change was to be 
born that the disciples lay oppressed with sleep while 
their Lord wrestled with His agony. 

And notice, also, this : that the bewilderment and the 
enlightenment which followed it came distinctly from 
the disciples' contact with the sufferings of Christ. It 
was under the shadow of His cross that they learned 
the deepest truth concerning Him, and found possible a 
faith in Him as the Saviour of their souls in a perfect 
sense which must have made all their previous inter- 
course with Him seem but preliminary to this great ex- 
perience — all this through the amazement of sorrow and 
distress with wiiich they first learned that He whom 
they had loved as the best of men was to be the most 
tortured and persecuted. I do not see how any one can 



252 THURSDAY BEFORE EASTER. 

well read those last chapters of the Gospels and not 
feel something of what is to me more and more their 
solemnity and charm — the gradual opening np in the 
suffering of Jesus of a revelation of His nature and a 
promise of His work, which at first overwhelms His dis- 
ciples with perplexity, and then, when they ha^^e once 
entered into it, becomes the substance of their faith and 
the inspiration of their work. 

And what took place then was only the anticipation 
of what has taken place all through the Christian his- 
tory, of what is taking place to-day. It is in contact 
with the cross of Christ, with the fact of His being a 
sufferer, with the spectacle of His self-sacrificing agony, 
that there has always come to the souls of men, first be- 
wilderment which seemed to paralyze their faith, r.nd 
then, by and by, a light which made their faith the glory 
of their lives. It may well be that some of you have 
passed through this experience. For years, perhaps, you 
knew Christ as a sweet, pure nature, as a noble and 
lofty Teacher. You listened to His words ; you loved 
to be with Him ; you even prayed to Him and asked for 
His advice, and felt sure that He heard you and gave 
you what you asked for ; He was your Teacher, your 
Master, and your Friend. Can you remember any time 
when you began to realize that this Teacher, Master, 
and Friend was the supreme sufferer of the world, and 
that somehow in His suffering, in His willing self-sac- 
i-ifice for you, lay the real value of His life for your sal- 
vation ? Can you remember with what confusion and 
dismay that idea first filled you, how you tried to throw 
it off, how you clung to the old pleasant picture of 
Christ the Teacher sharing with you His wisdom^ and 



THURSDAY BEFORE EASTER. 253 

how you slirank from the awful mystery of God utter- 
ing a love for you which was unutterable in any other 
way than by the giving of His Son to stand in the midst 
of all our human sin and bear its consequences beat- 
ing on His innocent life, and at hist die that you might 
live f Can you remember how in the fh'st pressure of 
that deeper trutli of Christ, in its first importunate ap- 
peal to be accepted as your faith, it seemed as if all faith 
in Christ died out of you f And then can you remem- 
ber how at hist that, the trust in, the love for, the suf- 
fering Saviour, the Christ of the cross, has come to be 
the faith in which is all your joy and hope? Ah, my 
dear friends, that is the story of thousands of human 
hearts. The passage from the love for Christ as a wise 
Teacher into the adoration of Christ as a powerful Sav- 
iour — thousands of times that has been made through 
mists and darkness where all faith seemed to grow blind 
and perish. But by and by the soul has come out in 
the light and found, as those disciples found, that the 
Christ on whom its eyes have opened was a more per- 
fect Christ, while He was stiU the same Christ as He 
whom it seemed to lose in its eclipse of faith. If God, 
perchance, is leading any of us now through an eclipse 
like that, may He watch over us while we are in it, and 
waken us in His own good time to that more perfect 
faith in Him which He intends for us. 

The whole great suggestion which has come to us out 
of the verse is the education which God wants to give 
us even by our failures. Failures enough we have — 
failures of faith, failures of love, failures of duty — fail- 
ures enough of every kind. If in our failures there 



25i THURSDAY BEFORE EASTER. 

were no material of growth and holiness, how large a 
part of onr life would have gone to waste, even if that 
were all the harm ! 

But it is good to know that as Christ by and by 
waked His sleeping apostles, and called them through 
their very faithlessness and disloyalty into a deeper 
faith and a truer service, so, if in all our weakness we 
can still be docile and repentant and submissive, He 
can and 'surely will bring in the end strength out of 
our weakness and brighter light out of the very dark- 
ness where our souls seemed lost. That may He do for 
all of us. Amen. 



XVII. 
GOOD FRIDAY. 

"And I, if I be lifted up, . . . will draw all men unto Me." — 
John xii. 32. 

We commemorate to-da}^ the "lifting- up" of Him 
who spoke these words. All the religions history of 
mankind since that event has been bearing witness to 
some trnth that was in them. For not even the most 
bewildered doubter about the hfe of Jesus can donbt 
this — that " all men " who have been brought into sight 
of the crucifixion have been " drawn unto " the Cruci- 
fied with igome kind of interest. There has grown out 
of the event of Grood Friday a new life of thought and 
action for the world. The brain and heart and hand 
of Christendom — of all that portion of the world, that 
is, which has preserved any real activity of hand or 
heart or brain — have been busy ever since in some way 
developing its results. No man looks, I think, at the 
modern world compared with the condition of degen- 
eracy into which the ancient world had fallen ivhen the 
Christian religion touched it, or at tlie condition of 
Christian life compared with that of heathen life in all 
times, without feeling ready to say, in some vague and 
large and general way, that the death of Christ has 
saved the world. 

255 



256 GOOD FRIDAY. 

The death of Christ ! not merely His character and 
teaching ; for historically, from the very first, the vio- 
lent death of Jesns has had a prominence in religious 
influence which will not allow us, even as faithful 
students of history, to leave it out of view when we 
speak of the great formative power of modern human 
life. Always and everywhere the Christ whom Chris- 
tianity has followed has been a Christ who died. The 
picture it has always held up has been the picture of a 
cross. The creed it has always held, however it might 
vary as to the precise effect of the death, has always 
made the fact of death vital and cardinal. The Jesus 
who has drawn all men unto Him has been one who 
based His power upon this condition, ^'if I be lifted 
up." 

But what was that lifting up? What was it that 
w^as really done on Calvary out of which such an influ- 
ence has flowed, so wide, so deep? We may say, I 
know, that it is a great deal better not to ask. Let it 
all rest, we may say, in that mystery and darkness 
^7hicli has proved itself so powerful. But yet our 
minds misgive us that it is not right to leave it so — that 
we are bound to know all that we can know of such a 
great event. Let us look into it this Good Friday 
morning. While we stand by the cross, let us try to 
know what it means. While we look out and see all 
men drawn toward it — see, mth the eye of faith, all 
men at last gathered about its foot^ — let us understand 
wherein the power lies. I hope we may gather some 
clearness, and so some devoutness, into our views. 

A man is dying — that is all that the external circum- 
stances of the picture show us. But then death, we 



GOOD r^RIDAY. 257 

know, is infinitely various. The deaths of men crowd 
into focus their natures and the meanings of their lives. 
Between the death of the saint and the death of the 
suicide, between the death of the martyr and the death 
of the pirate, lies all the great gulf that lies between 
their several characters. We must go behind this 
death, then, to find the nature of the Being that is 
dying, and the object of His death. His own view of 
it we find summed up in the statement He has made 
that it is to draw the attention and shape the destinies 
of all the world. ^^ If I be lifted up, I will draw all men 
unto Me.-' We surely cannot overestimate the great 
importance and clearness of the fact that Jesus looked 
Himself for the most mighty results to issue from His 
dying. The great importance which the Christian 
Church has given to that event has only echoed the 
infinite estimate He set upon it. He was always point- 
ing forward to it before it came. He met it with the 
most a^v^ul reverence when it arrived. And with the 
last gasp of His closing agony He announced the com- 
pletion as if it were the work of the world that had 
been finished. 

Now what relation this death of Jesus ma}^ have 
borne to the nature and the plans of God, I hold it the 
most futile and irreverent of all investigations to in- 
quire. I do not know, and I do not believe that any 
theology is so much wiser than my ignorance as to 
know, the sacred mysteries that passed in the courts of 
the Divine Existence when the miracle of Calvarj^ was 
perfect. Now the death of every man affects in some 
way the sensitive nature of the great Father, who 
^'is love." A wicked and presumptuous death must 



258 GOOD FRIDAY. 

auger Him as no other insult to His majesty could. A 
patient, trustful death must touch His deepest tender- 
ness. " Eight dear in the sight of the Lord is the death 
of His saints." How this death, then, must affect 
Him — ^this unique and solitary death, standing alone 
amid the dying ages, unmatched by any other ; what 
feeling it might waken, what changes it might work, 
in the mind of Grod, I do not know ; I do not think we 
can know. You say that it appeased His wi-ath. I am 
not sure there may not be some meaning of those words 
which does include the truth which they try to express ; 
but in the natural sense which men gather from them 
out of their ordinary human uses, I do not believe that 
they are true. Nay, I believe that they are dreadfully 
untrue. I think all such words try to tell what no 
man knows. 

If this be so, then it seems clear that all we have to 
do mth in the death of Jesus is its aspect toward, its 
influience upon, humanity. We are concerned with 
that which Jesus spoke of, its powerful effect to work 
upon the lives of men. And this could evidently come 
only b}^ its revealing and making practically clear to 
men some new truth which they had not known and 
believed before. This follows from the profoundness 
of Jesus' nature and intentions. A temporary and very 
violent change may be brought about in men by the 
striking exhibition of some old familiar truth, the sud- 
den waking up to action of some well-known but slug- 
gish and neglected law of life. But a great, permanent, 
progressive influence, a steady, constant setting of the 
power of human hf e, a new Avay toward a new point — 
that is attained only by bringing, and settling fii-mly 



GOOD FRIDAY. 259 

in, a new great truth, only hj establisliing a, new law 
nnder Avhicli a new life must be organized. Now Jesus 
Christ, whom without ii-reverence we call the greatest 
of reformers, the great Renewer, whom all true reform- 
ers do but faintly echo — Jesus Christ must of necessity 
have based His prophecy of permanent power in the 
world upon the introduction by His death of some such 
new truth, some such new law. He did not propose to 
regenerate the world by sentiment — to set np a spec- 
tacle of suffering and so stimnlate the hnman heart to 
action by mere pity. He was no spiritual demagogue 
attempting vast results by the excitement of mere 
transitory feeling. He did not merely set forth old 
truths in a striking and picturesqne way. That was 
what Socrates did, and he did well. But Jesus' work 
was deeper, and so more central and effective. He set 
forth a new truth, which men might have guessed at 
and longed for, but which they never could have 
known, and so which never could have genuinely ruled 
their lives, before. 

. What was that new truth, then? In one word, it 
was the truth of the forgiveness of sins. It may seem 
as if that truth was not so very new. But as a revealed 
truth it was new entirely. The one truth that had been 
clearly revealed about God before was that He made 
laws. God the Lawmaker was the ntterance of every 
voice that had thns far distinctly spoken to the finite 
from the Infinite. That utterance, gracious and inspu'- 
ing so long as the laws that it announced were kept, 
had become fatal and dispiriting as soon as law Avas 
\dolated. For the quick human conscience, bin-dened 
"vvith the certainty of sin, had reached the necessary 



260 GOOD FRIDAY. 

certainty that sin must have its penalty. I believe it 
needs no supernatural declaration of the fact, I believe 
the highest human thought of God itself discerns, that 
when God makes a law it is not, like the laws of men, 
an accidental thing, the mere creation of a choice, and 
so capable of being taken back and the penalties that 
belonged to its violation abrogated. But a divine law 
we feel must have something necessary and essential 
in it. It is the result and expression of a nature that 
is divine. The absolute character of the Lawgiver in- 
corporates itself in an absolute character of the law. 
So that when God says, " You must not lie," and you 
or I do lie, it is not possible for Deity to sweep His law 
aside and say, " No matter." He enacted truth because 
He was truth and could not help it. And when His 
enactment is despised, the nature that is in Him com- 
pels Him to make the despiser suffer for his wrong- 
doing. There is a moral limit even to Omnipotence, 
and the conscience of man decrees that He who can do 
all besides cannot do wrong, and so cannot treat wrong- 
doing in others just as if it were right. There is no 
strain in such a thought. It is merely an application 
in the moral world of that divine necessity which we 
are always owning and bowing to in the world of 
nature. You touch the fire and you must be burned. 
You cut an artery and you must bleed to death. The 
laws that issue from the very nature of the great first ' 
Source of law cannot be trifled with in their require- 
ments without a change in that nature itself which 
would make it less divine and perfect. 

This I hold to be the highest thought tha,t man 
reaches of God with any certainty outside of the New 



GOOD FRIDAY. 2C1 

Testament. It describes, I tliink, the true state of the 
thoughtful, conscientious nature outside of Christian 
influence. We hear that such a nature, finding itself 
in sin, hates God. I do not think that that is so. The 
man does not hate God. He does not blame God. He 
simply holds God bound by His perfect nature to exe- 
cute unpityiugiy His perfect laws. He sees that there 
is no escape. He recognizes that to forgive man would 
be to weaken and vitiate Himself. He says, " Yes, God 
is right. The blow must come. Not even Omnipotence 
can find an escape." His religion turns to submission, 
and gathering up his patience, he just bows his head 
and waits his punishment. 

This, it seems to me, is the true description of the 
thoughtful man who knows his sin and thinks of God 
out of Christ. All that he kiLOWs of in God compels 
punishment and precludes forgiveness. It is what a 
man must be driven to who knows no quality in God 
except the quality of law. But now suppose that in 
this same divine nature there were another feature, just 
as essentially and originally a part of it as the other — 
a faculty or quality which made the forgiveness of 
transgression a possible thing. Man surely cannot 
know what that quality is, because he can really know 
nothing of the nature of the laws which issue from the 
First Cause of all laAv with which it has to deal. The 
quality will not be identical with that by which man 
pardons the wrongs that are done against him, for man 
is no source of law, and so the injuries that he forgives 
are really not done against him, but against God, who 
stands behind him. Forgiveness of man by man I take 
to be only the handing up of crimes past any spite or 



2G2 GOOD FRIDAY. 

rancor of our own to the one only final judgment-seat. 
No ! forgiveness in Grod must be an unknown quality. 
It must not be a sudden thought, a mere expedient to 
meet an unforeseen emergency. It must not be a mere 
extemporized afterthought. It is a part of the eternal 
Deity. It has been with God, in God, from the begin- 
ning. It is from everlasting, as He is. It has lain 
waiting on the power of law tiR law transgressed should 
call it into action. On what previous races, in what 
previous worlds, it has been exercised we cannot know. 
We only know that as soon as its necessity arose with 
reference to our world, as soon as the necessity of 
punishment came forth at the first sin, this gracious 
power of forgiveness showed itself, and Mercy met 
Justice in the conflict, where it was sure to conquer. 

Now these two faculties or powers of Deity are mani- 
fested to the world under two personal characters. 
The Deity of law demanding punishment is God the 
Father, the Deity of forgiveness is Jesus Christ. The 
perfect harmony of the two powers, their coexistence 
in the one complete Di^dnity, must be made apparent ; 
not explained, not reconciled, only made cleaily known. 
Before a world of sinners, who know nothing of their 
God save that He has made laws whose dignity He has 
no power to infringe, there must come forth this other 
fact : that there is also a mysterious power which can 
meet those laws, absolve the penalty, and with the one 
condition of repentance let the condemned go free. 
As the law was in a person, so this forgiveness must be 
in a person too. As the lawgiving Person was eternal 
and supreme, so the forgiving Person must be eternal 
and supreme as well. It must not be the conflict of 



GOOD FRIDAY. 263 

two contending Deities, for the two are harmonious 
parts of one and the same nature 5 therefore the con- 
demning Father and the atoning Son must be not two 
Gods, but one God, at unity in every will and action. 
And yet the fact of self-restraint, of self-control, of the 
yielding of one requirement to another, of a conflict 
resulting in the ^dctory of one over the othei*, cannot 
be set before the eyes and minds of men save by the 
outward picture of a trial and a triumph, of suffering 
and effort, of harmony and reconciliation coming out 
of pain. 

Now here is our idea of Christ He was forever in 
the Deity^ the forgiving God, the clement of pardon. 
Uncreated, eternal as the Deity itself, the power of 
pardon has rested there in Him forever. Before Adam 
was made, before the oldest star or earliest sun, the 
certain fact was there that if ever a moral race of men 
was made, and those men sinned, the necessity of pun- 
ishment that would result must be met by a power of 
forgiveness which should cope with it and restrain it 
and offer a new life to the recreant and sinful nature. 
The ages rolled away. The creation of man arrived. 
The sin of man succeeded, and then, quick as all divine 
causes bring divine results, this element of forgiveness, 
this Christ, stood forward in the Deity and claimed 
His long-expected work. Adam and millions of his 
children, as they repented of their sins, attained for- 
giveness. The pardoning Saviour became the great 
administrator of the world. 

What, then, is this which we behold to-day 1 What 
but the great announcement, the assurance, of this 
everlasting truth? It could not have its full effect 



264 GOOD FRIDAY. 

until men knew of it. It conld not tempt the sinful 
and degraded souls into that repentance which was the 
absolute condition of its action^ till first it had been 
shown to them. And so the mystery of Incarnation 
came. This Christy who had been forgiveness an eter- 
nity before man was made, who had bestowed forgive- 
ness ever since man had sinned, came now to preach 
forgiveness, and by His willing suffering to show how 
the divine nature ma}^ sacrifice itself to reach the great 
end it desires of the replacement of a race into its lost 
holiness and hope. 

''If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto Me.'^ 
If this be so, is it not evident, then, where Jesus saw 
the power in His death that was to rule the world ? If 
it were really, that Good Friday cross, the holding up 
of a new faculty in Grod that men had guessed of and 
hoped for and dreamed about and even trusted in, but 
never known before, then was it a wild or reasonless 
prophecy that wherever that cross should be seen this 
new great truth, forgiveness — forgiveness by the mani- 
fest reconciliation of a yet unknown power in God's 
nature 5 forgiveness wrought by sacrifice, by pain, but 
wrought at any cost out of the great love God had for 
man — this new great truth, forgiveness, should "strike 
the closed hearts of men everywhere and make them 
open, and call them up in wondering gratitude to 
gather round and worship with responsive love this 
love, so marvelous, manifested to them ? 

How shall we hold otherwise than this ? We degrade 
the whole nature of the suffering Divinity if we picture 
Jesus just appealing to men's pity and lowering His 
mercy to be an applicant before their sentimental 



GOOD FRIDAY. 2G5 

sympatliy ^th pain. And we dislionor the divine 
completeness if we talk of the Atonement as if it were 
the late device to remedy an nnprovided break in the 
administration of the nniverse. No ! Clnist was the 
truth; the new truth, yet the everlasting truth — new 
in its certain exhibition to mankind, everlasting in its 
existence in the natui-e of God. This was the ''Lamb 
slain from the foundation of the world." Then — then 
alone — this spectacle assumes its truest majesty. From 
all eternity, upon whose very limit my sense aches in 
the attempt to measure it, this Jesus has been waiting 
to show this truth to me. He has come at last and 
shown it. He has written it out in blood. He has 
hung it up where I must see it. He has laboriously 
translated it into a hnman life, that I may not mistake 
it. And then, when He can do no more, when the 
truth that has been ti'ue forever has been thus fearfully 
announced, the work is over, and crying, "It is fin- 
ished,'- the Savioiu- closes His eyes and drops His head 
and dies. 

Oh, what a finishing that was ! It is as if eternity 
were crowded into the heart of Him who spoke. All 
He had been forever had consummated itself at last. 
The long j^earning to let men know what a love waited 
for them in the heart of God was satisfied. The light 
was kindled on the monntaiu-top, and ah'eady the quick 
ear of Di\-inity heard the stirring in thousands of val- 
leys, where men, hopeless before, were gathering up 
their bm-dens and with the inspii-ation of an unfamihar 
hope were starting to struggle up vrith them, deter- 
mined not to rest until they cast them down into the 
shadow of that unseen cross. What crv like this has 



266 GOOD FRIDAY. 

the world ever heard ? Not even that first utterance of 
calm creative j)Ower, " Let there be hght/' had greater 
meaning or sublimity than this last agony of love that 
burst from the lips of the satisfied Redeemer : '' I have 
been lifted up. I shall draw all men unto Me. Now 
it is finished." 

The truth we are to learn to-day, then, is the truth 
that sin may be forgiven. It is brought with enforce- 
ment to every part of our nature. It is presented to 
the conscience side by side with the enormit}^ of sin, as 
growing out of the same nature of the same God, who 
is both Condemner and Forgiver. It is urged upon the 
intellect as the clear revelation of Him alone who has 
any right to announce the sinner's destiny. It is laid 
close upon the heart with all the pathetic appeal of 
suffering, and emphasized with the terrible power of 
divine pain. It is the truth our souls need. Every- 
thing you have ever done that was wrong — the great 
and small transgressions of your life, your sins against 
yourself, your sins against your brother, your sins 
against your God — they may all be forgiven you. 
Your impieties and doubts, your omissions and com- 
missions, your tamperings with truth, your wicked 
thoughts and words and deeds — you need not carry 
one of them one step farther. They may all be forgiven 
and swept away, and buried so deep — so deep — that 
neither your own seK-reproacli, nor the malice of your 
most powerful enemy, nor tlie judgment of the offended 
law, shall find them out. Better than this, the wicked- 
ness of which they sprang, the sinfulness of which these 
sins were but the utterance, the evil heart, that too may 



GOOD FRIDAY. 2C7 

be taken utterly away and your sonl stand pure and 
reconciled — not like a soul that never sinned, but with 
the deeper love of a soul sin-stained and washed — be- 
fore the face of your forgiving God. Of all this there 
is no condition but the simplest — repentance and faith ! 
You must be sorr}- for your sins, and you must believe 
this truth of their removal. You must stand up and 
look back into eternity and see how, ages before you 
sinned, there was in the perfect Godhead this eternal 
Christ, already rich in provision for the coming woe. 
The sight will not make you presumptuous, as if the 
guilt whose cure was ready before it was itself in being 
Were a light and trifling thing. It will fill you -with a 
large and glowing love, standing in wonder before a 
mercy so far-reaching, so eternal, and so deep. All 
must be lighted by the manifest Redeemer lifted up 
upon His cross. You must be drawn to Him, and leav- 
ing your own life behind, you utterly pass into His life 
and be a new creature in Hun henceforth forever ! 

Do I state as a necessity what has been long the 
craving desire of your anxious soulf Do I say you 
must repent and trust, when this trust and repentance 
is the very thing that you have longed to be allowed to 
do f Do I say you must be di^awn, when your whole 
nature has been hungry with the desire to be allowed 
to rise and run to such a gracious God as this ? Then 
let me put the duty back and spread the new, great, 
certain privilege of faith before youi' eyes. Lo ! it is 
finished. Nothing remains to hide or hinder your per- 
fect open way. Whoever you are that hsten to me 
now, there is not one of you who, if he will hate his sin 
and put it away from him, may not come to God with 



268 GOOD FRIDAY. 

a perfect assui^ance tliat God will forgive liim, and intro- 
diice Mm through the gate of forgiveness into a better 
and diviner life, and lead him on from holiness to holi- 
ness, and bring him at last to untold glory. That is 
the message of the cross, and God grant that some of 
you may hear it and be comforted and saved. 



XVIIL 
EASTER DAY. 

" That I may know Him, aud the power of His resurree tion." — 
Phil. hi. 10. 

This was the Easter prayer of Paul, and Ms Easter 
prayer was the prayer of all his life, for he peculiarly 
lived in Easter all the time. The only one of the dis- 
ciples who had not known Jesus in His earthly life, to 
him the spiritual life of the risen and ascended Jesus 
was most especially near and dear. '• If Christ be not 
raised," he cried, " your faith is vain ; ye are yet in your 
sins." 

The Easter prayer of Paul was that he might know 
the power of this resui-rection of Christ. He was a 
man who was not satisfied to know a truth unless he 
also knew its power ; unless, that is, he felt its influence 
upon himself. For there are different sorts of know- 
ledge. Every fact has its outer form and its inner 
power, its visible shape and its in"\dsible meaning. 
Something happens and I hear of it. That is the 
slightest sort of knowledge. The mind simply receives 
and registers the incident. But let me find that that 
something has a relation to me — that it must influence 
my action and change my life : let me feel this deeph', 
and then I know the power of the fact. It is not the 

269 



270 EASTER DAY. 

mind alone, it is the whole man, who knows it. It is 
one thing to stand on the shore and see the great waves 
and say, " There is a stormy" and it is a very different 
thing to be out in the midst of those waves, tossed 
every way by them, fighting for your hfe. On the 
shore you know of them ; in their midst you know them, 
you know their powder. The first is information, the 
second is experience. Some men are content with 
knowing facts ; other people will be content only with 
knowing powers. An unfelt fact is nothing at all to 
these last. There is no truth to them that does not 
take their nature and their lives into its hands and 
change them. Of this last class was Paul, who prayed 
that he might "know the power of Christ's resur- 
rection." 

And Paul's prayer must be our prayer to-day. To 
make our Easter perfect we must come begging and 
trying to know in our own lives all that it means; to 
put ourselves into the power of Christ's resurrection 
and be possessed and formed by it. What shall we 
say, then, is this power ? How does this event, past so 
long ago, lay hold of and govern and change the lives 
of men living now? What new life does it lift them 
to ; what new spirit does it fill them with 1 Let us see 
if we can approach at all the answer to these questions. 

We celebrate on Easter Day the rising of our Saviour 
from the tomb. For that the whole aspect of our 
thought and worship changes. Our sober churches 
burst out into flowers, our hushed voices break out into 
songs of praise, our whole religiousness puts on another 
robe — exultation instead of sorrow, "the garment of 
praise for the spirit of heaviness." And we go about 



EASTER DAY. 271 

with one anotlier, heart saying to heart ever3^where, 
'' Christ is risen." And what makes that such a giad 
greeting is the assurance that is hidden in under it and 
is heard up through it : " We too shall rise." It is the 
assurance of our inmiortahty bound up with Christ's, 
the certainty that because He rose we shall rise also, 
that makes the resurrection such a message of gladness 
to us all. 

But is this all f Is this simple assurance of continued 
existence, that we are to rise from the dead and go on 
in some future state of existence — ^is this what Paul 
means by " the power of the resurrection " ? It seems 
certainly evident enough that Paul meant more than 
this — ^that it was some great powerful change to be 
w^orked in and on him himself. On. him — not merely 
on things about him. It was not simply that by 
Christ's death and resurrection the tyranny of the old 
law of decay had been broken, so that instead of living 
seventy years his life was to stretch out into eternity 
and never to end. It Avas evidently that the quality of 
the life itself was to be changed, that he was to be 
something new and diiferent, and not that he was just 
to be the same old thing a httle or a good deal longer, 
when he should know the power of the resurrection. 
This was what he prayed for. 

Indeed, there are not many of us that would .or ought 
to count the revelation of immortality so very great a 
boon if all that it meant were simply the infinite con- 
tinuance of life. Merely that an eternity should be 
opened up, out into which we should see stretching in- 
finitely these poor, piirposeless lives we live ; that we 
should be told that we were to keep on struggling aud 



272 EASTER DAY. 

grudging and envi/ing and crawling, misunderstanding 
one another, and blundering about in our half-know- 
ledge 5 just to be told that we need not fear an end cf 
this — that a revelation had come to tell us that it might 
last forever. Would this be such a joyous message f 
Would it not rather be terrible ? This life of ours does 
well enough, we think, for a little time ; but magnify 
it into an eternity and it is simply horrible. A " power 
of the resurrection " which could do only this for us, 
and nothing more, it would be far better that we should 
not ^^ know," for it would condemn us to helpless dis- 
gust with our own life, which we must yet go on living 
for ever and ever. 

This was not what Paul prayed for, and this is 
not what we want, then — not mere immortality^ This 
opening of ncAv prospects is no blessing unless there be 
promised some new capacity to fill them. The new 
world is no satisfying message unless there comes also 
some tidings of a new man who is to occupy it. The 
promise of resurrection finds its consummate satisfac- 
tion only in close union with the other promise of re- 
generation. The two must go together — the new world 
and the new man. 

This, beyond all doubt, is the idea of Paul. Mere 
eternity of time, an endless renew^al of the mere fact of 
life forever, would have been nothing to him — less to 
him than to almost any other man that ever lived — if 
there were connected with it no spiritual renewal, no 
infinity of spiritual life. He puts it all in one verse to 
the Romans : '^ That like as Christ was raised up from 
the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also 
should walk in newness of life." There is the whole 



EASTER DAY. 273 

power of the '' resiirreetion " — a new mau for tlie uew 
world. lu every respect in wliicli Easter opens a new 
prospect before man it ninst open also a new character 
in man. Until it has done that, man has not really 
'^ known its power." 

In order to nnderstand this it is necessary- for ns to 
see that Christ's resiu-rection has effect upon us not 
simply as a prophecy. It does not simply promise us 
something that we are to hope to reach when we have 
crossed the line of death and entered on the future 
world. It was not simply the announcement, '^ After 
you are dead another life will begin ; therefore live now 
in hope." On the contrary, it was a new value and 
color given to this life ; it was a change in the purposes 
and ways of li\ing now that it introduced. 

Indeed, the work of Christ in rising from the dead 
Avas not, properly speaking, a revelation of the human 
immortality. Men had known that before. The Phari- 
sees believed in it completely. Christ made it surer, 
certainly — He made it perfectly sure ; but His great 
work was done in bringing that future life, before so 
vague, so dim, so far away, into close oneness with this 
present life. The two had been two and He made them 
one — one in their government, one in their pm-poses, 
one in their one great, pervading, embracing responsi- 
bility. He " brought hfe and immortality to light," as 
Paul says. He put them where they could be motives ; 
and just as, when you hold before your child the prizes 
of his coming manhood for temptations, you change 
his view not merely of the life he is to live when he is 
thirty, but also of the life that he is li\ing now at 
twelve, so Jesus, when He made eternity clear and 



274 EASTER DAY. 

familiar to us by letting us see Him close as He passed 
into it, by opening its door wide and letting its golden 
glory stream back on the world on Easter Day, altered, 
transfigured, not merely that world wliicli before bad 
been to the most hopeful of mankind nothing but 
" Hades,'^ " the unseen," but also this whole present 
world, which is the preparation for it, and must share 
in the changes of its character. 

I often think that there is some faiut echo of the 
power of Jesus' resurrection when for the first time the 
death of a dear friend comes into a man's life and 
makes ifc thenceforth different, never again what it has 
been before. I do not mean the mere soberness and 
solemnity which the whole thought of li^'ing from that 
hour assumes ; I do not allude to the mere sadness of 
bereavement, but I speak of that new sense of realit}^ 
in the world beyond the grave which comes to all of us 
when for the first time we can think of one who has 
been intimate in our interests as having gone there and 
sat dowQ in the intimacy of its interests, which have 
heretofore been so foreign to us and so far away. 
Heaven has at once an association with us. We have 
a relation 4}here. One name is known in its mysterious 
streets, and so its streets become less mysterious and 
remote to us. It is somewhat as when a mother in 
some little country village sends her boy to the great 
city, and at once feels familiar with the great city be- 
cause somewhere, lost in among its hurrying thousands, 
her boy is there. His familiar life, transported to it, 
seems to make it familiar. She feels as if she knew all 
about it. She talks of it with a kind of affection, as if 
it were almost her home, because it is the home of one 



EASTER DAY. 275 

she loves. She catches eveiy mention of it as if it were 
a message meant for her. To go there is the constant 
dream of her life, and she feels as if when she came 
there she wonld know at once the streets in which her 
heart iias had its home so long. So w^hen a dear friend 
dies and goes to heaven, heaven at once catches and 
naturalizes into itself all our love for him. We read 
about it as if we knew it, and when we think of going 
there ourselves we think of it as going home, because 
our heart has had its home there so long. 

Is it not evident, then, from this wdiat it was that 
Jesus did for all the w^orld, and what it was His desire 
to do for all of us, by His resurrection ? First, by His 
life and death He had made the closest appeal that ever 
has been made to the human heart. He had taught 
man to love Him. He had called out the deepest and 
tenderest affection. With all this He passed down into 
the grave. We saw Him go in at the black door. We 
watched and waited after He had disappeared, till at 
last from a region that before had been to us like a land 
of ghosts, the region beyond the grave, the land of 
those who hve again, we saw Him come out, still 
clothed with our affection, still bearing our hearts with 
Him. At once that strange land lost its ghostliness. 
He was there^ not changed, but still such a one as we 
could love. His life there made it all real to us. We un- 
derstood Him when He said, " I ascend unto M}^ Father, 
and your Father ; and to My God, and your God." They 
were ours as well as His. We knew^ them as ours by 
knowing them as His. Already, just as the mother in 
her village lives yet in the great city, and her life is 
different because her clhld is there ; as the friend lives 



27G EASTER DAY. 

in heaven while he is still on the earth, and his life is 
altered and is happier and higher becanse his friend has 
gone to bliss, so the true Christian lives in the spiritual 
world in which Christ is, even v/hile he lives still in the 
body. His hfe is different this side the veil because 
his heart has passed through with his risen Saviour to 
that now familiar realm of life that lies beyond. In 
Paul's wonderful words, he is " risen v/ith Christ." In 
the words of our collect for Ascension Day, w^hich have 
the whole truth in them, '' Like as he does believe our 
Lord Jesus Christ to have ascended into the heavens, 
so he also in heart and mind thither ascends and with 
Him continually dwells." 

This is the pov/er of the resurrection. You see it is 
no far-off promise. It is a present gift. It is not the 
offer of a meager hope. It is the joy of Christian pos- 
session. It is the power of regeneration. " Except a 
man be born again, he cannot enter into the kingdom 
of heaven." Just as soon as a man is born again by the 
power of God's Spirit, he has already entered into the 
kingdom of heaven which Christ opened when He arose 
from the dead. 

And more than tins. As the fii'st power of the resur- 
rection is the power of regeneration, as a man begins 
to be under the influence of the eternal life that is held 
out before him only when he begins to have eternal life 
abiding in him, so it is not only in the beginning, but 
all through the new life. The life of a true Christian 
seems to me to be continually full of Easters ; to be 
one perpetual renewal of things from their lower to 
their higher, from their temporal into their spiritual 
shape and power. This is the true meaning of the self- 



EASTER DAY. 277 

sacrifice and self-denial with wliicli the Christian's life 
is filled. You are called on to give np a Inxury, and 
you do it. The little piece of comfortable living is 
quietly buried away underground. But that is not the 
last of it. The small indulgence which would have 
made your bodily life easier for a day or two, or a year 
or two, imdergoes some strange alteration in its burial, 
and comes out a spiritual quality that blesses and en- 
riches 3^our soul for ever and ever. You surrender some 
ambition that had exercised a proud power over you ; 
in whose train and shadow you had hoped to live with 
something of its glory cast on, you. You send that 
down into its grave, and that too will not rest there. 
It comes forth again with its old vigor purified and 
spiritualized, but made more strong and vigorous — a 
holy desire in place of an eager passion, as different as 
was the risen Christ who gave His " peace " to His dis- 
ciples from the yet uncrucified Christ as the populace 
fancied Him, when they thought that they could " take 
Him by force and make Him a king." You surrender 
a dear friend at the call of death, and out of his grave 
the real power of friendship rises stronger and more 
eternal into your Hfe. So the partial and imperfect 
and temporary are always being taken away from us and 
burled, that the perfect and eternal may arise out of 
their tombs to bless us. So our life is like the life of a 
tree, which is always full of immediate apparent failure, 
which is always dropping back after each rich summer 
to the same bareness that it had last winter, whicli 
keeps no leaves or fruit, and stands again and again 
stripped of every sign of life that it has put forth, and 
yet which stiU has gathered, as we see when we watch 



278 - EASTER DAY. 

it with a larger eye — lias gathered all those apparent 
failures into the success of one long, continuous growth ; 
has not lost the strength of those old summers, but 
gathered them into its own enlarged gu'tli and sturdier 
strength. What seemed to perish and die has really 
been only gi'own in, and makes the mature life of, the 
noble tree. And so it is with our hopes and plans and 
endeavors and resolutions and thoughts, which seem 
to fade and perish, but which, if we have the Chris- 
tian \dtahty about us, have been really grown in and 
make the new life, which is not merely a thing of the 
future, but a thing of the present. They are not simply 
taken away to be kept — the child that you saw die, the 
di-eam that you saw fade — to be kept in some future 
state till you shall be fit to come and get them — 

''Kept over your head on the slielf." 

They are here all the time ; not to be had by and by, 
but to be had now. They can be had in their spiritual 
return to you by and by only as you fii^st have them 
and keep them spirituallv now. You must carry their 
presence with you into the futui'e state or you cannot 
receive them there. And so, as we said, the power of 
the future resurrection is all along a power first of 
present regeneration. The things that Grod promises 
He will give us there He first does give us here, and so 
fits us to receive them in their completer gi\dng. The 
new life which is held before us is fii^st wi'ought out by 
the new birth creating the new man within us. 

In this \T.ew, how very slight a thing is death ! How 
very easy it becomes for us to understand the Bible 
storv that Christ, bv His death and resurrection, killed 



EASTER DAY. 1^9 

death and took away its victory and sting ! If the new 
spirit is formed in men here, if you and I may have 
eternal life abiding in us, clogged, hampered, and 
blinded, indeed, by the constraints of the poor body 
that we live in, and yet genuine and vital even here, 
and if death be nothing but the breaking down of the 
body to let the spirit free, then how clear it is ! The 
word of summons comes and the soul leaps to answer 
it. The eternal life in us answers to the eternal life 
bej^ond the grave, recognizes it, flees to its own. There 
is no violence of transfer. It is a continuation of the 
one same life. The grave is only the moat around the 
inner castle of the King, across which they who have 
long been His loving and loyal retainers on the farther 
side enter in, sui-e of a welcome to the heart of His hos- 
pitality. Far above any morbid or affected, unnatural, 
unhuman pretense of a wish for death there towers this 
calm Christian confidence, ready to die, yet glad to stay 
here until the time comes ; knowing that death will be 
release, and yet finding life happy and rich with the 
power of the resurrection already present in it ; count- 
ing both worlds G od's worlds, and so neither despising 
this nor dreading the other. That is the Christian light 
on the dark river and the fields beyond, that streams 
forth only from the opened door of Jesus' tomb. 

I have dwelt thus long upon the truth of the new man 
for the new world, the regeneration for and by the 
resurrection. That, be assured, is the great Easter 
truth. Not that we are to live newly after death — that 
is not the great thing— bnt that we are to be new here 
and now by the power of the resurrection ; not so much 



280 EASTER DAY. 

that we are to live forever as that we are to, and may, 
live nobly now because we are to live forever. 

And this great trnth of Easter will decide and fix tlie 
whole character of the religion that grows np about it. 

1. In the first place, it will establish the preeminent 
and necessary joyonsness of true religion. Easter Day, 
rightly considered, makes the religions life the happiest 
of all lives, and insists upon our always treating it as 
such. For the happiest of all conditions is that in 
which one is the partial possessor already of a hope 
that promises its own completion. The child's life is 
so very happy because it already has enough of the 
real, conscious manly character in it to prophesy more 
for itself. And the true man never outgrows the child's 
joyousness, because he keeps always a future before 
him of what he is to be, suggested, promised, and in 
part realized by what he already is. The two unhappy 
and joyless conditions would be, one the utter absence 
of hope, and the other the possession of a hope that was 
only hope, that had no real existence in the present. 
So a religion that opened no eternity, or a rehgion that 
offered no beginning of eternal life until the other, 
world was reached — either of them would be unhappy ; 
one with despondency, the other with restlessness at 
the postponement of the soul's worthiest ambitions. 
Bat once admit this power of the resurrection which 
we have seen ; let the new eternal manhood, formed 
within us now, begin to promise us in every hope and 
dream and glowing picture of holiness what the new 
man is to be and do forever, through those undivided 
ages where only by the growth of love and worship the 
eternal souls shall know that eternity is growing older ; 



EASTER DAY. 281 

let present imperfection be at once consoled and stini- 
nlated; let every dissatisfaction with the present be 
made, not a discouragement, but an inspiration, by the 
continual consciousness of the great law of eternal 
growth ; let the everlasting Saviour be always speaking 
out of every language of outer and inner life to the 
immortal soul, "Thou shalt see greater things than 
these ;" '' What thou knowest not now thou shalt know 
hereafter '' — and then can such a religion be anything 
but one continual joyousness ? The whole life is recast. 
Every new hindrance or delay becomes either the proof 
or the occasion of some new love. Fear, which is 
always partial and superficial, is cast out, and the 
nature is submitted utterly to the great profound sway 
of love. "Worship springs, not out of duty, but out of 
eager willingness. It becomes the heart's own glad 
registration, by one '^Ebenezer" after another, of the 
progress through which it has been alread}^ led. The 
joyousness as well as the holiness of eternity begins 
within us even now. 

At least, to-day, my friends, let us remember this : 
that religion is, not by accident or chance, but by its 
own very nature, the happiest of all lives. Just so far 
as it ever grows sad and gloomy, it grows irreligious. 
This is the true index of the power of the resurrection. 

2. And this same joyousness and hopefulness must 
extend itself and cover our fellow-creatures and all 
nature. That man ought to distrust his Christianity 
very deeply wdio finds that wiien lie has become a 
Christian he takes no more large and hopeful and 
charitable view of his fellow-men and their lives than 
he did before. The glory of a revealed immortality is 



282 EASTER DAY. 

that it exalts into struggle for a purpose that which 
seemed to be only the restless tossing and heaving of 
mere discontent. You have a neighbor, for instance, 
whose w^hole life dissatisfies you. There is no sym- 
metry about it. It seems to be made up of mere tire- 
some tossing hither and thither, back and forth, under 
the power of mere passion. He is neither good nor 
bad, you think. He does good things, but they are 
done wdth no persistency. He thinks a high thought 
sometimes that surprises you, but you cannot see that 
it has any place or meaning. It seems to have wan- 
dered in like a comet, and to have no real place in the 
system of his mind. He does kindnesses, but his kind- 
ness is all fitful and unreliable, broken up by moods of 
bitterness or gusts of temper. 

And what you see in him in the little you see on a 
larger scale in the great world — poor fitful efforts after 
goodness, broken and distracted; a mere unrest and 
moral turmoil everywhere. What can interpret it 
except the great opening of an eternity, and the sight 
of the power of that eternity working even here? 
With that in view, we come to a large and tolerant 
suspense of judgment that is good for us. Who can 
say how much of this which seems purposeless restless- 
ness is really purposeful struggle f The wild, confused 
waves are going somewhere. We grow to a sure con- 
viction that very much of what seems bad is only good 
unformed and struggling under the power of the resur- 
rection to its full development and exhibition. This, I 
do believe most deeply, is the true Easter view of our 
disordered world. 

I am not preaching any mere feeble optimism. I 



EASTER DAY. 283 

am not weakly calling that good which is evidently and 
finally bad, of which there is abundance in the world.. 
I would not, just for the sake of mental and moral 
relief to ourselves, claim that the world is going right, 
when so evidentl}" and in so many ways it is going 
wrong. Even on Easter Day the world is very bad and 
irreligious and untrue and impure. But I count him a 
poor Easter Christian who" does not feel the power of 
the resurrection filling him with hope, who does not 
gather from the victory of Christ a firm assurance that 
the good is stronger than the evil, and who does not 
rejoice to know that some at least of the doubt and be- 
wilderment about us, some at least of what seems the 
decay of mere corruption, may be the fermentation of 
new life slowly ripening for the purposes and under 
the power of that immortality which Jesus brought us. 

I wish we had time to point out also how this power 
of the resurrection, this new eternal manhood once 
created in us, transfigures and changes not merely all 
internal, but all external things. The world itself, even 
material nature — trees and fields and skies, noontimes 
and mornings, sunsets and midnights — cannot be the 
same when they are found to be the education-place, 
the school-room, of a being with a destiny such as the 
resurrection of Jesus Christ makes known for man. 
We cannot think of them as made only to feed us and 
to warm us and to shelter us — to have relation only to 
our bodily wants. They must have moral uses. They 
must bring moral meanings to that soul which this new 
truth of immortality exalts to be tlie monarch of the 
world. You say that this is poetry. But is not all 



284 EASTER DAY. 

religion poetry? Is not every Christian by the very 
necessity of the case a poet? There is no poetry on 
earth like the Christian's faith, that most noble of all 
creative powers, "the snbstance of things hoped for, 
the evidence of things not seen." And so it is the 
commonest Christian consciousness, belonging not only 
to a few exalted minds, but to all Christian minds in 
their several degrees, that to them, with their new life, 
the whole world of nature became new too, had new 
words to speak to them of Grod and of eternity, and 
that all through their lives there are times when the 
enlightened universe becomes vocal and its visible real- 
ities impart to them 

"Authentic tidings of invisible things, 
Of ebb and flow, and ever-during power, 
And central peace subsisting at the heart 
Of endless agitation." 

But most of all this power of the resurrection, this 
present apprehension of an immortality, transfigures 
the whole morality of our lives. What is it to do our 
duty? Ah, how many of us know the slavery and 
bondage of long days and years, when with no enthusi- 
asm to inspirit us, mth no love for the hard tasks that 
were laid upon us, we have just tugged away at things 
that we knew we ought to do, under a vague and 
dreary instinct, discouraged and disheartened by the 
continual sense of how poorly we did them after all ! 
Ah, all that is changed as soon as the Easter truth of 
the new man is shown to us — a new man, made in the 
image of Him that created him, of Him who rules him. 
So that henceforth there is not merely a submission of 
the soul to the law, but a sympathy of the soul with 



EASTER DAY. 285 

the Lawgiver, whicli turns morality into fidelity, wliieli 
breaks the hard mask off from the mere doing of duty 
and turns it into the loving service of the Saviour. 
There are many great and exultant momeuts in our 
lives ; moments in which some new, heretofore unf elt 
motive takes us into its power, when some new work 
for us and some new power in us starts forth and 
makes life seem fresh and green, like a spring morning 
that forgets all the stains and storms that have gone 
before it. But among all such moments there is none 
that can compare with that in which dut}^ passes into 
love — when morality, reaching itself out into eternity, 
asserts its sameness of nature with the service that the 
glorified nature is to render to God in the heavenly 
city, so that the obligation of honesty in our bargains 
is seen to rest on the same sanctions and to be lustrous 
with the same beauty now that will belong to the sing- 
ing of the everlasting songs and the casting of the 
crowns before the Sa^dour's feet — the moment when 
our life thus knows Christ and the power of His resur- 
rection. 

I have tried to tell you what that power is. It is the 
power of a realized immortality, the power of a per- 
sonal regeneration, the power of a present Christ. 

What can I do, then, but invite you all to know that 
power by earnest self- surrender, by patient prayer, and 
by a childlike faith that willingly takes into its loving- 
life the willing, living, loving Christ of Easter Day! 
O fellow-believers, let us hope that at His table now we 
may meet Him and feast with Him, and deeply know 
Him and the power of His resurrection. 



XIX. 
ASCENSION DAY. 

"And a cloud received Him out of their sight." — Acts i. 9. 

"■ Then we which are alive and remain shall "be caught up to- 
gether with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air : and 
so shall we ever be with the Lord." — 1 Thess. iv. 17. 

Last Thursday was Ascension Day. Then we re- 
membered how the Lord, whose story we have once 
more followed through the months of this winter which 
is now past, mysteriously at the end departed from the 
sight of men, and called upon their faith to follow Him 
and recognize His power still at work even when they 
could not see Him. These two texts which I have 
chosen for to-day contain the story of the Ascension. 
The first describes the fact of Christ's departure. The 
second tells us what His departure is to be to His ser- 
vants ; how, even in that last and crowning experience 
of life, they are to have some fellowship with Him. 

As to the fii'st of these, the story of w^hat actually 
took place upon the Mount of Olives, I have always felt 
that the- Ascension of Jesus was the event, of all that 
are recorded of Him in the Gospels, the most difficult 
to present to the imagination in any picture of its pos- 
sible methods or circumstances. We cannot follow it 
out at all in its details. We have to rest, I think, in 

286 



ASCENSION DAY. 287 

the mere fact of His departure in some way unlike the 
old familiar way of death. Something which had been 
foreshadowed in the mysterious departures of Enoch 
and Elijah was fulfilled in the disappearance of the 
Lord w4io was so vastly greater than His servants who 
had gone before Him. It could not be that^ once hav- 
ing died and then arisen from the dead, He should at 
last by a new death have yielded to the power w^hicli 
He seemed to have subdued. It could not be that, 
again living among men, He should just live on forever, 
so never letting His ministry pass beyond the imper- 
fection of the visible, always drawing the hosts of be- 
lievers to Jerusalem, instead of lifting them up purely 
to His spiritual home, in holiness. And so there came 
a disappearance which was not death ; a disappearance 
strange and mysterious, but not more wonderful than 
had been the life and character of Him who so departed. 
I think tliat any man who had watched Jesus' life and 
understood its wondrousness, and then stood watching 
to see w^hat would be that strange lifers final scene, 
could have asked nothing more, could hardly even have 
cared to know the details of method — how this marvel- 
ous body had gone, where it had gone — but would have 
accepted and acknowledged the perfect fitness of the 
story, when the disciples with calm and solemn faces 
came back into Jerusalem and only said, "While He 
blessed us He was taken up, and a cloud received Him 
out of our sight." 

It is not, then, the physical meaning of tlie Ascension 
of Christ that I want to speak of. What does it mean 
spiritually ? What does the mysterious going away of 
Him who for three and thirty years had lived such a 



288 ASCENSION DAY. 

marvelously human life upon tlie earth mean for us 
whom He has won to His service by the life that He 
lived here ? And the first thing that it means, I think, 
is the assertion cf the necessarily infinite and transcen- 
dental character of Christ, the establishment of the 
vastness and magnitude of the relation between Him 
and the world. See what I mean. Imagine the life of 
any one of the disciples of our Lord. First he had 
been a Jew. He had worshiped Grod. Far off, en- 
throned in mystery and majesty, Grod had been true 
and real to him. He had knelt in the temple at Jeru- 
salem. He had listened in the synagogue at Caper- 
naum. He had meditated as he floated on the blue 
waters of G-ennesaret. Everywhere he had known 
God, but an unreality had haunted all his knowledge. 
He had struggled to find God, but God had eluded 
him. He knew Him, but he could not make Him real. 
Then had come Jesus. Wonderful had been the 
months that they had spent together. Beautiful and 
solemn had been the gradually growing certainty that 
God was real. The commonest things had been inter- 
preters of Him. The baked bread, the penny for the 
taxes, the fishing-net and fishes, the water- jars at the 
wedding — all of them had seemed to be right in the 
hands of God, warm with His di\dne touch, bright 
with His divine smile. We can understand that. We 
can see how beautiful it was. Can we not also see a 
certain danger that must have been in it ? As a child 
is always in danger of coming to think about his father 
as the provider of the household, as the willing fur- 
nisher of food and clothes and shelter to his children, 
and to forget the real heart of fatherhood, the care for 



ASCENSION DAY. 289 

tlie character, the wish for spiritual helpfulness, so may 
it not have been with these disciples ? The arrest and 
deatli had violently broken the spell, indeed. The dis- 
ciples had wakened from their dream that this sweet 
life with their Master could g'o on forever — the pleasant 
walks across the breezy hills and in the quiet lanes ; 
the ready table spread in the great desert place; the 
happy sig-ht all through the long day of this kind, lov- 
ing face. That was all gone with the awful night when 
Judas led the soldiers to Grethsemane. But even after 
the Resurrection, Jesus had sat with them at table 
at Emmaus, and H^ had met them by the familiar lake 
and multiplied the draft of fishes. Still their souls 
clung to the lower forms of compan}^, and even to the 
material advantages that His presence would bring 
them. But then came the Ascension. He disappeared. 
All the constant sight of Him was over. They had to 
lift their eyes, to lift their hearts. The dear familiarity 
which thej^ had gained with Him never could be lost 
again. But now the mj^stery, the majest}^, which they 
must have lost sometimes came back again. They 
could no longer think of Him as the multipher of bread 
solely or chiefly. The higher purposes of His being 
filled in behind His special acts. The greater life of 
their souls with Him, keeping all the intimacy of their 
special earthly intercourse, began. Peter and John 
and Andrew and Bartholomew worshiped the unseen 
God in the memory of their own dear Jesus, and loved 
their Jesus with all the profound worship which they 
paid to God. Life^ thity, love, and prayer became large 
and solemn, while they still kept the reahty and person- 
alness of the Incarnation. 



290 ASCENSION DAY. 

And now is not that something perpetual ? Is it not 
something that comes back to us with ever-new fresh- 
ness as we come back ever anew to the wonder of the 
Ascension? There is a constant tendency of religion 
to belittle itself. As it becomes real to us the ends for ' 
which it exists seem often to grow small. This always 
appears in men's relations to Christianity and Christ. 
At first God seems to us very dim and far away. And 
yet there is a certain awe and reverence in all our 
thought of Him. We speak with bated breath. There 
comes a seriousness into our faces at His name. Then 
comes the blessed revelation of the Gospel. Christ the 
Incarnate, close here by our side, tells us that God our 
Father is not far away. He teaches us that all that 
interests us interests Him. He tells us that we may 
ask God for everything we want. He encourages us to 
lay our most homely burdens at His feet. The mer- 
chant may call to God in his perplexity of business; 
the school-boy may ask for help in his hard task ; the 
sick man may cry out for health; and no appeal for 
safety from any poor frightened man or woman shall 
go unregarded. This is the glory of the Incarnation — 
the intimate, personal God. But is there no danger? 
Once, when Jesus was on earth, an eager, passionate 
man came running to him, hot mth a fiery grievance, 
and crying out, " Lord, speak to my brother, that he 
divide the inheritance with me." Once, as the Saviour 
sat with a woman at a wellside and made her feel how 
near He was and how strong He was, she broke out at 
last and cried, " Sir, give me this water that you speak 
of, so that I need not come hither to draw." Once, 
when the Lord had won His disciples' trust entirely, 



ASCENSION DAY. 291. 

two of them came to Him one day and asked Him to 
promise them that they should be kings in the kingdom 
which they thought that He was just going to estabhsh. 
AU these are illustrations, I think, of the way in which 
men even now come to a belief in Christ — catch some- 
thing of that idea of the nearness of God which is 
involved in the Incarnation, but apply it only to the 
lower order of things, and are inclined to deal with the 
Christ in whom they have learned to believe onl}^ upon 
the earthly ground. One man believes in Christ, and 
thinks that His religion is the only safeguard of good 
government. Another man believes in Christ, and to 
him the Christian faith seems to be almost provided 
that it may be the bulwark of his favorite conserva- 
tisms. Another man never seems to get beyond the 
prayer for daily bread, though he never could have 
prayed that prayer with the beautiful and childlike 
trust that fills it now if it had not been for the way in 
which Christ has made manifest to him the all-pro\dd- 
ing Father. One believer can never get his thought of 
Jesus large enough to transcend his own little set or 
denomination of mankind. Another, though he looks 
beyond the line of death, and talks much of what Jesus 
is going to do for him in the other world, has really 
made that other world only an enlargement of this, as 
earthly as the earth itself, and thinks of Jesus there 
only as saving souls from pain almost as material as 
that from which a brave fireman plucks the child whom 
he rescues from a burning house. Now all these men 
are believers who are using Christ in His lower offices. 
They are following Him like the multitude who ate of 
the loaves and were filled, and then came hurrying 



292 ASCENSION DAY. 

across the lake that they might still be with Him when 
the famine should fall on them again. What hosts of 
Christians such as these there are ! The Master does 
not tnrn them off for the imperfection of their know- 
ledge, for the earthliness of their needs, and for the low- 
ness of their appeals to Him. But then His sonl longs to 
have them meet Him npon higher ground, to have them 
ask Him for the heavenly things with which His nature 
aches in His desire to give them aw^ay to those He 
loves. As a father gives his children bread and waits 
for the day when they shall ask him for knowledge, for 
sympathy, for hope, for inspiration, for noble ideas, and 
for strength to meet temptation, so Jesus guards your 
house for you, makes j^our business prosper, holds up 
your head iu sickness, builds you. the pleasant compan- 
ionship of His Church, and promises you happiness 
forever, and all tlie time is looking anxiously to see 
your face glow with the higher desires which He most 
loves to satisfy — with the desire of holiness, of a divine 
unselfishness, of the communion with Himself. 

But now imagine that the Incarnate Life had never 
passed into the heavens. Think of Jesus here on earth. 
Can we imagine am^thing but that the lower uses of 
His life would have usurped men's attention ? — just as 
in those days of the Gospels a thousand would have 
flocked to Him with gaping curiosity or selfish greedi- 
ness for one who came with a soul eager and hun- 
gry for His holiness, a thousand would have clung to 
His strong hand for one who craved admission to His 
heart, a thousand would have stood amazed at His 
power over the stubborn forces of the earth for one 
who lived with Him in the heavens, where His soul was 



ASCENSION DAY. 293 

living all the time. But now the Ascension came. It 
did not break the spell of the Incarnation. None of 
ns believers in the Lord treads the most fresh and un- 
explored nevr soil of any Western prairie without feel- 
ing that it is the same earth wliich has been consecrated 
through its utmost leugth and breadth by the divine 
feet of Jesus. The Incarnation keeps God forever near 
and real ; but when we cannot iind the God incarnate 
stiU visible on the earth, but must go forth into the 
heavens to seek Him, that effort must forever help us, 
however we still dare to tell Him of our very lowest 
and most humble needs — that effort must forever help 
us to seek Him most for that which He most loves 
to satisfy, the need which the unseen part of us has 
for the unseen part of Him, the need which our soul 
has for His soul, the need of being made holy and 
heavenly. 

I think I see in the balance of wants which lies in 
the completest Christian's heart and finds expression 
from his lips, in the way in which he freely asks God 
for the smallest things he wants, and yet is always 
drawn away from these petitions to sublimer prayers, 
the rich and ripe issue of a faith which has in it a 
Bethlehem and a Mount of Olives — an Incarnation and 
an Ascension : an Incarnation so that we may always 
pray with perfect trust and confidence, and an Ascen- 
sion so that we may always pray with loftiness and 
spiritual aspiration. In such a faith Christ is always 
coming to us here upon the earth, and we are always, 
as St. Paul promised us that we should be some day, 
even now being caught up in the clouds to meet the 
Lord in the air. 



294 ASCENSION DAY. 

Is there not something that corresponds to this and 
lets us understand it in the history of every friendship 
which has grown strong and familiar here upon the 
earth and then, has been stretched by the death of one 
of the friends until it reaches all the way from earth to 
heaven and bridges all the gulf between? You used 
to see j^our friend every day. You talked with him 
of little things. You grew famihar over trifles. The 
fields under your feet, the merchandise that passed from 
hand to hand, interpreted you to each other. The 
commonest chat over the newspaper made you more 
truly friends. And then death came, and none of that 
treasured familiarity is lost in all the years that have 
passed since you looked into his face for the last time. 
He is as near to you as ever. He is with you on the 
earth. And yet you think of him more loftily, you 
seek his inspiration more solemnly, you invoke his 
memory as a more sacred spell than you ever were 
moved to look for in his daily presence. You feel your 
impurity and baseness when you think of him now, as 
you did not when you used to sit with him by the fire 
and walk with him in the streets. He is the same to 
you, but greater. He is as real, but far more lofty. 
He has not ceased to meet you on the earth, but now 
you also meet him in the air, and so he influences both 
the least and the greatest part of you. You dress your- 
self as he used to like to see you dressed, and you try to 
think and see things as he must see them now as he 
stands before God's throne. 

Let us try, if we are really Christians who believe 
that Christ our Lord has " ascended into heaven," to 
enter into His heavenly life by the largeness and lofti- 



ASCENSION DAY. 295 

iiess of the prayers that we bring to Him. God forbid 
that we should so misread His exaltation that we should 
hesitate to ask Him for the very smallest things ; but 
the things that belong to our peace are what He wants 
to give us. The things that make this world and its 
interests seem small when we think of them : the for- 
giveness of sin, the perfect purification of our souls, 
the driving out of selfishness, the disregard of comfort 
in pursuit of duty, the care for brethren more than for 
ourselves 5 not comfort, not spiritual rest, not freedom 
from pain here or hereafter — not these, but the chance, 
the power, the will to glorify Grod our Father in our 
lives as He, the perfect Son, did in His — this we may 
ask if we believe in the Ascension and have understood 
the heavenly life of Him who is still our Brother and 
Saviour. 

Another suggestion which comes to us with the story 
of the Ascension of Jesus is that of the true associa- 
tion of our humanity with the vastness of the universe. 
I have ah"eady said how difficult — indeed, impossible 
— I think it is for the imagination to draw any pic- 
ture of the details of this wonderful event on which 
our minds are fixed. No man can ev-en imagine for 
me what was the fate of that dear flesh and blood 
which, having suffered on the cross and lain in Joseph's 
tomb, disappeared from the disciples' sight upon the 
Mount of Olives. Where it was carried, what changes 
it underwent, no man has ever known. It is all so far 
past our knowledge that no man's guesses have the 
slightest value. We do not wish to hear them. But 
yet the story makes this fact clear : that a true human 
life, still truly human, passed forth beyond our human 



296 ASCENSION DAY. 

conditions and found itself a place in the sublimest 
regions of the universe. I cannot trace it, bnt that 
body of Christ yet lives somewhere in some mysterions 
and nnknown region of this vast creation in one little 
corner of which we live. Humanity, then, so the 
Ascension tells me, may be at home somewhere else 
than on the earth. It has nobler kinships than with 
the brutes. It may enter into the welcome of larger 
hospitality than any that the stateliest mountains or 
forests can extend. The Resurrection had shown that 
humanity might relive here upon the earth, even after 
the catastrophe of death, that seems so terribty the end 
of all. The Ascension showed that out beyond the 
earth, wherever the vast system of existence is held as 
a unit in the hand of one Creator who is Lord of all, 
out to the end of all things over w^hich God reigns, 
this humanity, which seems to be shut in to one small 
planet, may go and find a home and kindred beyond 
the farthest star. 

Is that a gain 1 If every enlargement of the general 
life of the race is a boon to the weakest and poorest 
being who bears the human nature and who comes in 
sight of the larger outlook of his kind, then surely this 
great Light thrown on the range of human existence is 
indeed a gain to any poor, depressed, and struggling 
man who comes to believe it. The slave learns that 
the master who is to him like a god is a man like him- 
self. A humanity like his own sits in those stately 
halls and walks over those broad fields. A struggling 
student learns that his humanity has risen to the height 
ot David's son^ or Kewton's insight. A country boy 
becomes swar^ of "ihe stupendous distances to which 



ASCENSION DAY. 297 

men like himself have explored the globe, and of the 
strange transcendent regions in which they have 
planted their human homes. A self-respect, a noble 
ambition, a consciousness of freedom and of chance, 
must come. A great, vague, but strong call must 
sound out of the distance. This dream of being some- 
thing must gather into a vision and the soul leap into 
the heaven of new hopes. 

I turned to write this sermon from the reading of a 
remarkable article in the "Atlantic Monthly/' in which 
a most intelligent and observant writer has told the 
story of the operatives in a New England factory town 
exactly as it is going on to-day. It is a terrible tale ; 
not for the suffering of which it tells, not for the con- 
scious misery of the people — that is much less than 
perhaps, in oui' sentimentality, we are apt to think — 
but for the blank limitation of life, the utter earthli- 
ness, the absence of high thoughts and hopes, the 
dreariness to which humanity has been reduced. That 
is what makes it terrible. To tui-n from such a story 
to the everlasting record of how once a human being 
passed beyond the cloud, still human, and those who 
watched Him saw Him no more, but there came back to 
them certain assurance that He still lived and had been 
welcomed in the central splendors of the universe — it 
is hke being present at the sunrise, when the dark 
earth finds herself full of glory, and partner in all the 
greater glory in the midst of which she swims. The 
soul that truly believes the stor}^ which it reads may 
be still de'Hfened by the clatter of machinery and 
crowded in by the squalidness of the low town, still 
jostled in the dingy streets and bhnded and choked by 



298 ASCENSION DAY. 

the dust of earth, but it has gained the freedom of its 
own self -consciousness. It is proud with the pride of 
an imprisoned king. It has gone forth after Christ. It 
meets him in the air. Fettered and fastened down in 
body, yet when it knows that the human Christ has 
ascended into the heavens, with its human heart and 
mind it too thither ascends, as the collect so nobly 
prays, and with Him continually dwells. 

No man can fully comprehend aU this without the 
whole aspect and thought of death being changed to 
him. For a human being to go out from this earth is 
a dreadful thing if it is only with this earth tha^t 
humanity has any known relation. No wonder that he 
would rather fret himself against the wharf than cast 
adrift upon a sea that has no other shore. He goes into 
the outer darkness. He leaps off from the precipice 
where aU the millions have leaped before him, and he 
knows no more, for all the millions that have gone be- 
fore him, where his leap wiU carry him. But now let 
us believe in the Ascension. Once a human being, the 
best and completest of all human beings that have ever 
lived, the human being whose humanity was perfect by 
its very union with Divinity, has gone, still human, 
out of the sight of men — gone, evidently, all alive. 
We cannot trace His course. The cloud received Him. 
But yet we know that somewhere out beyond the 
limits of our little earth that true humanity of His has 
found a home. Still we may long to know a great deal 
more 5 but, knowing that, do we not know much ? 
Humanity can live beyond the earth, can keep broad 
live relations with the universe. The man who goes 
to-day, then, goes still into the dark, but the darkness 



ASCENSION DAY. 299 

into which he goes is pierced now by a path of light, 
and at its heart there is a home of light to which he 
goes. For His hnnianity has claimed its place in the 
great universe. Tlie humanity of Jesus has gone be- 
fore and makes the vast unknown not unfamiliar. 
Around our thought of it our thoughts of the men we 
have seen die, our thoughts of our own coming deaths, 
can gather into confidence and calmness. 

A great man died yesterday — a man great in philan- 
thropy ; a man who has passed through all the tributes 
by which men identify and own their heroes : through 
hatred and scorn fii-st, through respect and honor after- 
ward; a man whose name for years was a taunt and 
byword on many a white man's lips, while it was hope 
and music in the ears of the trembling negro ; a man 
whose noble career will forever mark, more than any 
other man's, the progress of our country out of the sin 
and shame of slavery. He was a man of genuine and 
true humanity, a man whom those who, in the days we 
well remember, hated him most, to-day will name with 
cordial honor. The great deep changes of these twenty 
years could find no more striking illustration than the 
fact that there are not many men through all the land, 
North or South, who will not stand in reverence beside 
the grave of Garrison. 

When such a man dies, when a great human soul 
goes forth from this familiar earth, we little know how 
much of the assurance with which our hearts still fol- 
low it, and think vaguely, but assured^, of the con- 
genial work to which it will be set in some new region 
of the universe, comes to us from that sight which our 
faith has beheld on the Mount of Olives, as we have 



300 ASCENSION DAY. 

watclied the humanity of Jesus pass out to its eternal 
life beyond the narrow limits of the earth. 

And yet this is not all. We must not talk as if it 
were the mere giorification of the g-ejieral humanity 
which we behold in the Ascension. Man was exalted 
then, but it was a Man — one whom we knoAY, one whom 
we understand and love, one who is everything to us, 
one whose humanity is all the more dear and true be- 
cause He is vastly more than man — it was a Man like 
this who passed into the heavens and made the heavens 
forever intelligible and near and sweet to us. Let us 
come round to this before we close. If on some hither- 
to unexplored and uninhabited island far away in the 
seas a man goes to hve. whoever he may be — the poor- 
est and least interesting of oiu- race — he clothes the 
island with intelligibleness. I can understand and 
reahze its existence when I know that a human foot 
has been pressed upon its sandy beach. If he is a 
great, strong, notably manly man who goes there, car- 
rying with him a large share of our humanity, then he 
gives the island more than intelligibleness. He gives 
it dignity. It is full of interest. We all wait to hear 
what he is doing in that now much-regarded land. 
But if the man who goes there is my friend^ and if be- 
fore he goes he tells me that the island is ultimately to 
be his and mine, that he is going to make it ready for 
my coming, that he will come back again and take me 
to it by and by, then how that island burns for me — 
the one live, real, shining spot in all the world ! It is 
the goal of aU my thoughts, the lodestone of my hopes. 
I think of it until the familiar house in which I was 
born, and where I am living still, seems strange to me^ 



!!) 



c 



ASCENSION DAY. 301 

compared with that one shining spot that has become 
so real. My friend's love makes it all glow and burn 
before me as if I myself already saw the sun shining on 
its mountain-tops and flashing on the sm^f ace of its rip- 
pling streams. 

Can anything like that come to us with regard to the 
unknown heaven to which our Lord has gone ? O my 
dear friends, if He is indeed our Lord, all that must 
come to us. Heaven is not only real because His 
humanity is there, not merely glorious because His 
greatness is there. It is dear because His love is there 
— the love which filled His earthly life, the love of the 
miracle and of the wayside teaching and of the cross. 
The nearness and the glory might be there and yet 
heaven not lay hold of our hearts. We might be well 
content to stand far off and gaze. We might not want 
to go there. We might not listen for messages, nor 
send our feeble voices forth in prayer. But now our 
Christ is there, our Saviour, what wonder if the earth a 
thousand times seems dull and wearisome, and always 
gets its best brightness from that other world in which 
He is, of which this is the vestibule ! What wonder if 
we listen, and know that He must speak to us ! What 
wonder if we want to tell Him all about our life, and 
our hearts know that He can and will hear us ! What 
wonder if the hope that He will some day take us to 
Himself abides calm and constant behind all the tran- 
sitory hopes of life, which are lighted and go out again 
and again, while that hope remains always as the deep 
sky remains behind the coming and the going of tlie 
stars ! 

All this the Ascension does for us. "A cloud re- 



302 ASCENSION DAY. 

^ ceived Him out of their sight." Into mystery and a 
1/ darkness to whicli His going there alone gives any true 
light our Saviour goes. But oh, my friends, when by 
and by our way leads also into mystery and darkness, 
when truth becomes covered with doubt, and joy with, 
sadness, and life begins to feel the waiting death, what 
can help us like the faith of the ascended Jesus "? The 
way into the cloud may be a way up and not a way 
down, a way toward Him and not a way from Him. 
Doubt, sorrow, death — these may be, these to the true 
soul must be, like the clouds over the Mount of Olives 
through which the Son of Grod went up to the right 
hand of His Father. " We which remain shall be caught 
up in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air : and so 
shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort 
one another" — comfort yourselves too, comfort and 
strengthen yourselves and one another — "with these 
words." 



XX. 

WHITSUNDAY. 

"The communion of the Holy Ghost." — 2 Cor. xiii. 14. 

The great benediction of the Christian Church never 
grows old and never becomes monotonous. It is like the 
sun shine J which rises on us every day of our lives with 
a fresh beauty ; or like our truest friendships, which 
are forever new. " The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, 
and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy 
Ghost, be with you all." Among the blessings invoked 
in it is this last : '^ the communion of the Holy Ghost." 
Upon how many ears has the invocation of that bless- 
ing fallen ! How many souls have felt the peace and 
assurance that was in it descend upon them as if it fell 
out of the opened heaven ! And yet how vague to 
many of those who love it most is the full meaning of 
the phrase ! It is well, I think, that we should study 
it to-day. For to-day another Whitsunday is here. 
Again the door stands open, and we look into the 
chamber where the pentecostal grace was given to the 
Jewish peasants which made them the teachers of the 
world. Again we see the tongues of fire burning over 
the disciples' heads. Again we witness the true birth 
of the Christian Church in the gift of the communion 
of the Holy Ghost. It is good for us to draw near 

303 



304 WHITSUNDAY. 

reverently and try to understand the wonder as we 
ma}^, for the poAver of which the Church was born is 
the power by which it has lived ever since and is living- 
now. And for us, as for those apostles, there is no 
blessing more continually needed than "the commu- 
nion of the Holy Ghost." 

We go, then, first to the perpetual and universal 
facts of human life, for Christianity alwaj^s uses them 
and is in harmonj^ with them. And one of the deepest 
of these facts is man's perpetual need of intercom-se 
and fellowship. A life of sohtude is never satisfactory 
to a truly health}^ man. He needs some fellowship. 
And for his whole satisfaction he needs various fellow- 
ships : with those above him, on whom he depends ; 
with those beside him, who are his equals ; and with 
those below him, whom he helps. All three of these 
relationships furnish the life of a completely furnished 
man. And the essence of all these fellowships is some- 
thing internal ; it is not external. It is in spirit and 
sympathy, not in outward occupations. It is commu- 
nion and not merely contact. This goes so far that 
where communion is perfect, where men are in real 
sympathy with one another, contact or outward inter- 
course may sometimes be absent. I said no man was 
satisfied with a wholly solitary life : but a man msij be 
satisfied with a very silent life. If he can be assured 
of sympathy with other men, can know that he shares 
their feelings and that they share his, he can be con- 
tent that very few words should pass between them, 
conscious all the while of a communion that lies deeper 
than communication. What a man really needs, then, 
is a true understanding of other men, community of 



WHITSUNDAY. 305 

iutelligence producing community of sentiment, inter- 
est in the same things producing the same feelings. 
This is commuuion. And then the second fact is that 
the communions or fellowships of men are seldom 
direct, but come about through a medium. They are 
not the mere liking of men for each other for quali^ 
ties directly apprehended, but they are the result of a 
<?omnion interest in something which brings the men 
together and is the occasion by which their sj^npathy 
is excited, the atmosphere or element in which theii* 
communion lives. Is not this so? Two children in 
the same family grow up in cordial love for each other ; 
but theii" love is a love of and in the family. They 
did not dehberately choose each other for friends, 
but their hearts were drawn out in the same direction, 
toward the same father, the same mother, the same 
home life, and so they met and came to know each 
other. So two scholars find then- element of commu- 
nion in theii' common study. Two business men reach 
each other and become friends through their common 
lousiness. Two artists learn and love each othei''s 
natnres tln'ough the interpretation of the beautiful 
work in which they are both engaged. Two soldiers' 
hearts beat together in the throl^bing heat of the same 
battle. And two reformei*s enter into each others life 
in the indignation or enthusiasm of a common cause. 
In every case you see the union of men is made through 
a thh-d term, an element into which ]:>oth enter, and in 
which they find each other as they could not ^vithout 
it. Tliis is the way in which men come to l)e gathered 
in those groups wliich make the variety and picturesque- 
ness of human life. The men of business are gath- 



306 WHITSUNDAY. 

ered in that mutual understanding whieli is born of 
their common occupations ; their personal sympatbies 
are presided over by and are included in the commu- 
nion of business ; the scholars are gathered in the com- 
muuion of learning, the artists in the communion of 
art, the philanthropists in the communion of philan- 
thropy 5 while men, as men, as separate from all the 
other orders of beings which fill the universe, hold 
their personal relationships all included in, all under 
the sanction of, their common human nature, all 
embraced in and sealed by the great communion of 
humanity. 

Now it is in the apphcation of this same idea that 
there lies, I think, the key to this phrase, "the com- 
munion of the Holy Ghost." Once more there is an 
element, an atmosphere, in which men are brought 
close together — brought together as they come under 
no other auspices, in no other way. That element is 
God. Men meet each other, when they meet in Him, 
mth peculiar confidence, dearness, frankness, and 
truth. Just as there is a certain character which be- 
longs to the intercourse of men who are met as the 
pursuers of a common business, and so are met in the 
communion of that business ; and there is another 
character which belongs to the intercourse of men who 
are met as the disciples of a certain study, and so are 
met in the communion of that study, so there is yet 
another deeper and completer character which belongs 
to the fellowship of men who come to have something 
to do with one another as the servants of God, and" 
so whose communion is the communion of God. Not 
directly, not simply for the apprehended and appreci- 



WHITSUNDAY. 307 

ated qualities which they perceive in each other, but 
two meu, both of whom love aud are trying to serve 
God, even before they know anything more about each 
other, are united in that fact, and all their later union 
and the gradual mutual understanding which grows 
up between them grows up witliin that fact and is all 
filled by it. All their fellowship is a fellowship by and 
through God. Their communion is the communion of 
God. ^ 

And now take one step farther. Who is the Holy 
Ghost f I do not want to talk to you theologically this 
morning. I want to speak of the Holy Ghost purely 
with reference to this one work, the communion which 
He makes between men. But who is the Holy Ghost ? \ 
He is the effectively present Deity. He is God contin- 
ually in the midst of men and touching their daily 
lives. He is the God of perennial and daily inspiration, 
the Comforter to whom we look in the most pressing 
needs of comfort which fill our common life. He is 
the God of continual contact with mankind. Tlie doc- 
trine of the Holy Ghost is a continual protest against 
every constantly recurring tendency to separate God 
from the current world. A God who made the world 
and then left it to run its course under the t^-ranny of 
force and law ; a God who redeemed the world eighteen 
centuries ago and left it to be blessed by or to miss the 
blessing of the redemption which He had provided — 
neither of these ideas of Deity can comprehend the 
truth of God the Holy Ghost. A present God, an ever- 
living God, an ever-pleading, ever-helping, ever-saving 
God — this is the God whom Christ told of and prom- 
ised, the God who came in the miracle of Pentecost 



30S WHITSUNDAY. 

and is forever here. And now add this idea to what 
we said before. Wherever the fellowship and inter- 
course of men has a peculiar character because it is 
born of the presence of God among men ; wherever 
men's dealings with each other, or men's value of each 
other, is colored with the influence of the truth that 
we live in a world full of God ; wherever our commu- 
nion with each other takes place through Him, the 
sacredness and usefulness of what we are to each 
other resulting from what He is to all of us, then our 
communion is a communion of the Hoty Ghost. 

Do I make this plain ? Here are two groups of men. 
They both hold together in their own ways. But one 
of them is united by the mere liking of individual for 
individual. The other is bound together by common 
allegiance to a principle. One is like a mass of sand 
crowded and pressed together so that particle clings to 
particle and a show of solidity is presented. As soon 
as the sand grows dry the cohesion disappears and the 
whole mass falls apart. The other is like a gathering 
of iron-dust about a magnet, where each particle holds 
fast to its neighbors by the pervading power of the 
magnetic influence that fills them all. Then, if you 
substitute a person for the principle, and make grati- 
tude and loyalty the power that holds the men together, 
you come nearer to the idea. Who has not seen and 
felt the beauty of a company of men held into brother- 
hood by their enthusiastic affection for one central man 
who overtopped them all and dropped his bounties into 
all their lives? His name became the watchword of 
tJieir union. Their whole great company seemed to be 
filled with and repeat his character. And then, if for 



^YH1TSUNDAY. 309 

all lower persons you substitute God, and think of men 
as bound together and doing all good things to one 
another because they are His children and receive alike 
His daily goodness, then, in a world of men whose 
principle of unity is a forever-present Deity whom they 
all love, you have the communion of the Holy Ghost. 

Or see it in an illustration of it. You go into some 
foreign land, where men are very different from what 
you have knowai them here. You find men there — men 
with the common human form, and, as you come to 
know them, wdth the common human characters and 
passions. It is not in om* human nature not to feel a 
fellowship with those human beings. Simply as atom 
to atom, your humanity is draAvn to theirs. With an 
interest such as no brute inspires, they take hold of 
your life. There is the communion of humanity be- 
tw^een you. But suppose, as you go on and know them 
better, you find that among them there are some whom 
God has touched, and who are drawing toward Him, 
loving Him, trying to do His will. It may be very 
blindh^ it may be through a heav^^ mass of brutal 
ignorance, or through the tortuous channels of some 
fantastic superstition, but in some way they are show^- 
ing the power of a present God. The Holy Ghost has 
reached them. They see dim streaks of spiritual light. 
They make vague flutterings of spiritual desire. Or 
suppose the other extreme. Suppose these souls you 
find are lofty, pure, wdse souls — souls far above j^ou in 
spiritual light and vigor. In either case, do not you, a 
man who, in your own degree, are living in the power 
of a present God, find yourself drawm into the fellow- 
ship of these kindred souls, whether they are higher or 



310 WHITSUNDAY. 

lower iu tlie spiritual life than you are? Your soul 
recognizes a servant of the Lord it serves. He may be 
above or below you in the household, but he serves the 
same Master. Through that Master you are brought 
together. In your common search for holiness under 
the care of Him from whom holiness proceeds, you 
meet each other. It is the communion of the Holy 
Ghost. 

I doubt not there is a deeper philosophy in this than 
we can understand. The Bible truth is, we have de- 
clared this morning our belief, that the Holy Grhost is 
'' the Lord and Giver of hfe." The power of life is the 
power of unity everywhere. It is the presence of life 
in these bodies of ours that keeps them from falling 
to pieces. The moment that life departs dissolution 
comes. Health is the true and close relationship, the 
happy ministry, of part to part. And so life, which is 
the gift of the Holy Ghost — nay, which is the presence 
of the Holy Ghost in society or in the soul — is the 
power of unity in society or in the soul. The society 
in which there is no presence of a living God drops into 
anarchy and falls to pieces. The soul in which there is 
no presence of a living God loses harmony with itself, 
becomes distracted. Sin is incoherent and disintegrat- 
ing. Goodness is the power of coherence. No mere 
compact of man with man or nation with nation can 
ever bring about reliable and settled peace ; no mere 
aggregation of selfishnesses in treaties and confedera- 
tions can ever obliterate the a^^i^ul fact of war — nothing 
but a common love of God and obedience to His laws 
and enthusiasm for His will ; not a communion of 
policy, or a communion of good nature, or a commu- 



WHITSUNDAY. 311 

nion of unambitious indolence, but a communion of the 
Holy Ghost. 

Again, our idea finds its illustration in the different 
characters of different households. I think that all of 
us must be able to see it there. Lift the curtain, if 
you will, from two homes, both of them happy and 
harmonious, neither of them stained with vice nor dis- 
turbed with quarrels. One of them is a household of 
this world altogether. The domestic relationships are 
strong and warm. The loves of husband and wife, of 
parents and children, of brothers and sisters, are all 
there. The}^ prove themselves in all kind offices. Each 
helps the other, and there are no jealousies, no strifes. 
There is the best picture of the communion of the 
family affection. Now look into the other home. All 
is the same, but mth this difference : that here there is 
an ever-live, strong, vivid, loving sense of God. As 
real as father or mother, as real as brother or sister, 
God is here. No act is ever done out of His presence. 
He is felt in the education of the children. The chil- 
di'cn are His gifts. The love of each member of the 
household for the rest is colored all through with grat- 
itude to Him. All of that love is deepened because 
each desires for each sacred and spiritual mercies. 
My dear friends, there are such households ; not house- 
holds where the family affections have been crowded 
out by religious feeling, but where they have been 
deepened and transfigiu^ed by it; where parents love 
their children better, and children love their parents 
and one another better, because they all love God ; where 
the common intercourses of home are signs of some- 
thing deeper, and really signify the communion of the 



312 WHITSUNDAY. 

Holy Ghost. What does it mean when religion enters 
into a family, when over all the home life is stretched 
out the hand of God, and all a household is converted? 
I do not know how to tell the story of what happens 
then — of the deep, sweet, solemn change that comes 
over all the family experience — except by Just this 
phrase : that the comm.umon of natural affection has 
passed into the communion of the Holy Ghost. All 
these loves which were there before move on still, but 
they are all surrounded by and taken up into one great 
comprehending love 5 and he who enters in at the door 
of that converted house hears them all in deepened, 
riehened music, the same strains still, only full of the 
power of the new atmosphere in which they are played. 

And so it is with friendship. Two men who have 
known each other for jeaYS become together the ser- 
vants of Christ. His spirit comes to them. Tht^y begin 
the new life of which He is the center and the soul. 
How their old friendship changes ! How it is all the 
same, and yet how different it is ! It opens depths and 
heights they never dreamed of. Where they used to 
do so little for each other, now they can do so much. 
Where they used to touch only on the outside, now 
their whole natures blend. They have taken friendship 
and planted it where it belongs, in the soil and air of 
the divine love; and it opens its essential richness as 
the tropical flower which has been living a half -life in 
northern soil tells its whole sweet and gorgeous story 
of itself when it is carried to the bright skies and warm 
gi'ound for which God made it. 

One of the most valuable changes which comes to a 
human friendship when it is thus deepened into a com- 



WHITSUNDAY. ' olo 

muiiion of tlie Holy Ghost is the assurance of perma- 
nence which it acquires. There is always a lurking- 
distrust and suspicion of instability in friendship which 
has not the deepest basis. No present certainty an- 
swers for the future. Present kindness only bears 
witness of present regard, and each new moment needs 
its new proof. How we have all felt this ! 

" Alas that neither bonds nor vows 
Can certify possession ! 
Torments me still the fear that love 
Died in its last expression." 

This must be so to some degree with an affection where 
each is held to each onty by the continuance of personal 
liking. But when friendship enters into God, and men 
are bound together through their common union with 
Him, all the strength of that higher union authenti- 
cates and assures the faithfulness and perseverance of 
the love that is bound up with it. The souls that meet 
in God may well believe that they shall hold each other 
as eternally as He holds each and each holds Him. 

And the same power which insures the perpetuity of 
friendship must also secure a wider range of s^^mpathy 
and fellow-feeling among men. The more the associa- 
tions of men come to consist in what is essential, and 
not in what is merely formal, the larger becomes the 
circle of a man's fellow-creatures with whom lie may 
have relations of cordial interest. So much of our 
communion with men is a communion, not of spirit, 
but of form. We associate with men beca,use we hap- 
pen to be thrown in with them in the mere circum- 
stances of our lives ; because we live in the same circle 



314 WHITSUNDAY. 

of society, and so our habits are the same ; because we 
are seeking the same ends of life in the same kind of 
actions. And very often our sympathies are bounded 
by the same narrow hves which limit our associations. 
But the communion of the spirit, the communion of 
the Holy Ghost, is something deeper, and therefore 
something wider, than that. Wherever any human 
soul is loving the God whom we love, feeling His pres- 
ence, trying to do His will, though it be in forms and 
w^ays totally different from ours, the communion of the 
Holy Ghost brings us into sympathy with him. There 
is no influence of the Christian life more ennobliug, 
more delightful, than this. The more you come into 
communion with God, catch His spirit, understand His 
life ; the more quick your eye becomes to detect the 
spiritual life of other men, though it be hidden under 
the strangest forms, the more broad your heart grows 
to embrace it. Coming to love God is hke climbing a 
high mountain. It takes you out of the low valley of 
formal life. It sets you upon the open summit of spir- 
itual sympathy, close to the sun. Thence you look out 
into unguessed regions of noble thought and h^dng, 
with which you never dreamed that you had anything 
to do. Oh, upon Whitsunday that all seems so plain 
-which sometimes seems so dark and difficult. It is not 
by working away upon our forms and organizations 
and trying to make them coincide that the present 
miserable divided condition of Christendom is to be 
outgrown. It is only by the perception of one another's 
earnest spiritual purpose underneath their different 
methods that Christian sects like those that divide our 
Christian world can come to anything like sympathy 



WHITSUNDAY. 315 

or union with one another. And they can come to know 
one another's spirit only as they come to know God, and 
to understand how much more is the spirit than the 
form to Him. It is the communion of the Holy Ghost 
in which Christians must meet. If they could only 
meet in that high atmosphere the}^ would make verj' 
short work of these terrible differences of form and 
organization which trouble them so much now. They 
would no more quarrel a,bout them than two soldiers 
meeting on the wall of an enemy's citadel to capture it 
would quarrel about the different patterns of the scal- 
ing-ladders by which they climbed there. 

But meanwhile is it not a very lofty and inspiring 
ambition to offer to a man, that the more he knows 
and loves God the more he shall see the noble and the 
good in all his brethren f We should like to believe in 
men so much more than we do ! We are almost ready 
to give up in despair; the meanness, the foulness, the 
cruelty of humanity crowd on us so. It is a great 
promise to make to a young man when you say to him, 
"If you will earnestly try by obedience and loA^e to 
enter into communion with God, these brethren of 
yours, who are like sealed books with stained covers, 
shall open to you, and you shall see goodness, noble- 
ness, truth, devotion, all through them." It is a prom- 
ise which, if he takes it, may be his salvation from 
wretched cynicism and despair. There never was a 
man who really tried to serve God who did not have 
his sympatli}^ with his fellow-men widened thereby. 

Here is the difference between religious and secular 
philanthropy. Secular philanthropj?- loves and helps 
men directly, for themselves. Religious philanthropy 



316 WHITSUNDAY. 

loves and helps men in God. Secnlar philanthropy has 
often a tendency to despise the people whom it helps. 
Its pity is streaked with scorn or disgust. Religions 
philanthropy is always growing, as it becomes more 
religions, more reverent toward the beggar whom it 
feeds, or the sick man whose bed it smooths. Secnlar 
philanthropy^ is always dwelling on the duty of charity. 
Religious philanthropy is the overflow of brotherly 
kindness, the communion of the Holy Ghost. There 
is much of so-called religious philanthropy that never 
gets above the secular spirit, and much of so-called 
secular philanthropy that is loftier and finer and more 
religious than it knows 5 but these are the distinctions 
that lie between the help which men give to one an- 
other for themselves and the help which they give to 
one another for the love of God, whose love inwraps 
them both. 

It is time for me to stop, for here there waits for 
us the sacrament of the holy communion, which shall 
illustrate to us, as we receive it, all that I have said. 
I have not dwelt upon all of the great work of the 
Holy Spirit, whose manifestation at the Pentecost we 
celebrate to-day. I have not tried to tell of that trans- 
forming work upon the soul by which He makes it 
anew into the image of Christ. I have dwelt only 
upon this : that as we come to Him we come to one 
another 5 as we come to God the Holy Ghost we come 
to one another. He is the constructive principle and 
power in human life. By Him every society of good 
men is bound together. By Him the Christian Church 
rises into the sky of God's grace like a majestic tree 
full of aU precious fruit. By Him the family wins a 



WHITSUNDAY. 317 

new sacredness, and every frieudsliip of men who are 
trying to serve God is bonnd into indissoluble nnion 
with an nnseen but strong compulsion. If you are 
afraid of yourself as you find how 3^0 a are drawing 
away from your fellow-men and growing into a more 
and more selfish life^ you must come to God ; you must 
enter into the communion of the Holy Ghost. If you 
have a quarrel which you hate and know is miserable, 
but which holds you fast, your only freedom from it is 
in the communion of the Holy Ghost. Come there and 
your quarrel will break and scatter as the ice melts 
when 3^ou bring it into the sun. If you are conscious 
of narrowness and of inability to s^^mpathize with men 
whose forms of life or faith are other than your own, 
still it is in the communion of the Holy Ghost that you 
must find the broader spirit. It is the communion of 
a common forgiveness and a common inspiration. As 
in an old village men and women gather from their 
several houses to drink of one common fountain and 
meet one another there, so they who need the help and 
pardon and comfort of God, coming to get them from 
the everlasting Comforter, meet one another in Him. 

May we so meet in Him this morning, and the bless- 
ing which has rested upon so many generations rest 
once more on us, making our communion a true com- 
munion of the Holy Ghost. 



XXI. 

TRINITY SUNDAY. 

''Again. He sent other servants more than the first. . . . But 
last of all He sent unto them His Son." — Matt. xxi. 36, 37. 

This is Trinity Sunday, and Trinity Sunday is in 
some sense the day of faith. It is the day of the soul's 
aspiration and ambitious desire to know all that it can 
know about God. There are two questions which it is 
possible for the believing man to ask about his faith. 
The first of them is not ambitious. It is overcome by 
the presence of difficulty and doubt and disagreement. 
It tries to reduce Christianity to the lowest and sim- 
plest terms. It asks, " How little may a man believe 
and yet rightly call himself a Christian?" There is 
a time for such a question. When the soul, puzzled 
about many of the details of its belief, still longs to 
keep hold of the sacred name, or when, aware that 
souls may doubt and differ much on special points and 
yet be one in spirit, we desire to feel ourselves in fel- 
lowship with just as many devout and earnest hearts 
as possible — at such times as these this question comes 
rightly enough : " How little may a man believe and 
yet be truty called a Christian?" It is the invalid's 
question : " How low can I let the fire of life bui-n 
down and yet not totally go out ? " The other question 

318 



TRINITY SUNDAY. 319 

strikes an other note : '' How much does my Christian 
faith give nie a right to beheve and know concerning 
God?" Do you not feel the difference immediately? 
That is an aspiring and ambitions qnestion. It is a 
question full of force and hope. It is a question that 
opens a future. It is the question, not of the invalid 
upon his bed, but of the strong man with his armor on. 
However the first question may claim certain conditions 
for its own ; however it may properly recur on some 
duU days, perhaps in some long, dull periods, of Chris- 
tian life, evidently the true question for our faith to 
ask is, not that, but this other. Only in the struggle 
and desire to know all that we can know of Cod must 
lie the hope and satisfaction of mankind. 

I have wanted to begin my sermon of to-day with 
such a plea as this for the ambitiousness of faith. 
There is a great deal of danger of our forgetting that 
to believe much, and not to believe little, is the privilege 
and glory of a full-grown man. There will come times 
— and upon such a time our lot has fallen — when men 
are led to sing the praise and glorify the influence of 
doubt. Assuredly it has its blessings, but while we 
magnify them w^e ought never to forget that they are 
always of the nature of compensation. The blessings 
of doubt are like the blessings of povert}^, not to be 
chosen for themselves, but to be accepted thankfully 
Avhen they come in to mitigate the unnaturalness of 
the condition into which a life, missing of its true pur- 
pose and success, has fallen. There do come times 
when you must cut a tree down to its very roots in 
order that it may grow up the richer by and by ; but a 
whole field of stumps is not the ideal landscape. The 



320 TRINITY SUNDAY. 

forest, with its wealth of glorious foliage, is the true 
coronation of the earth. There is a great deal of dan- 
ger lest the tendency to dwell upon the blessings and 
culture of doubt may come to make a full and rich 
faith seem to be almost a burden instead of a treasure ; 
a tiling for a man to be pitied for, and not to be con- 
gratulated upon. It is, I think, no very unusual thing 
for men who believe httle to look at one who lives in 
the richness of a large, full faith with something almost 
like commiseration, somewhat as there is a tendency 
in settled invahdism to count exuberant health a some- 
what gross and vulgar thing ; and their feeling is very 
apt to communicate itself to the believing man himseK, 
and make him half ashamed and mistrustful of his 
own belief. 

Against such a tendency we want to warn one an- 
other and to warn ourselves. Seek faith — as full and 
rich a faith as you can find. Tr}^ to know all you can 
about God and your own soul. Count every new con- 
viction which is really won a treasure and enrichment 
of your life. There are dangers in accumulation of 
every sort — danger lest the thing accumulated should 
lose some of its value as it becomes more plentiful; 
danger lest the sense of possession should lose for us 
some of the discipline that can only come in search — 
but these dangers are nothing to the danger of the 
despair of faith, the terrible danger of coming to think 
that Grod is darkness and not light, the terrible danger 
of ceasing to hear His perpetual invitation to His chil- 
dren to come on and in. into ever more trustful and cer- 
tain knowledge of His purposes, of His love, and of 
Himself. 



TRINITY SUNDAY. 321 

If all that I have said be true, then there can be no 
loftier study with regard to man than the attempt to 
trace his progress into richer and richer faith ; to see 
how humanity becomes the recipient of revelation after 
revelation of God, until it stands in the fnll light of 
the New Testament. Upon this Trinity Sunday, when 
we especially recall the great statement of truth in 
which our faith culminates, I want to make that at- 
tempt. Let us try to trace in briefest outline the 
growth of faith, and see how branch adds itself to 
branch until at last there is the glory of the perfect 
tree. 

1. Faith begins when a man becomes aware of his own. 
soul. We must go back as far as that. We picture 
to ourselves (although no man has probably identified 
it in his own experience, and no historian has ever put 
his finger on it in the record of the world) — we picture 
to ourselves a deep and solemn moment when man, 
having known himself thus far solely in his most ex- 
ternal nature, as a being of the senses and of the fleshy 
becomes aware of the mysterious spiritual life w^hich 
lives within. He comes to know of keener pains and 
more exquisite pleasures, of duties and responsibilities 
and hopes and fears which are not of the body, but of 
a truer self which lives within the body, and which, 
when he has once found it, becomes to him his only 
real, true self — the he who really lives his life and 
owns the only essential and intrinsic character w^hich 
he possesses. That is the beginning of all faith. In 
that faith in his own soul man for the fii'st time be- 
comes capable of belief in unseen spiritual existence 
anywhere. Unless he had that primary knowdedge of 



322 TRINITY SUNDAY. 

spirit in himself, all evidence of spiritual being would 
come to him and pass away from him as uselessly as 
the south wind blows across a stone. That first faith 
comes by self -consciousness. A thousand voices come 
to whisper assurance to it when it has once begun to 
know itself, but its birth is out of the bosom of the 
human self -consciousness. A man knows his own soul, 
knows that he carries a spiritual life, and in that 
knowledge faith begins. 

2. But faith, once born thus in the consciousness of 
spirituality, cannot lie unobservant in its cradle. It 
lifts itseK up and looks abroad upon the world. Just 
as the child, grown conscious of its own intelligence, 
searches in all things for an intelligence correspondent 
to his own, and finds it in the parental providence 
which protects and rules his life, so man, believing in 
his own soul, searches the world in all its higher regions 
for the evidence of soul, of spiritual nature, correspon- 
dent to his own — the evidence of thought and will and 
love — and finding them abundantly, attains the faith 
in God. Next to the faith in soul there comes faith 
in the Father-soul or God. That faith precedes all 
Bibles, all recorded utterances of God. Man does not 
learn from any book the first truth of the existence of 
Divinity. The utterances of the Books of God, when 
they come, confirm the faith and make it large and 
rich, just as, when he whom we have known of with a 
perfect certainty for years comes into our presence at 
last and speaks to us, the perfect assiu'ance which we 
have had of his existence grows yet more sure. So, 
when God speaks in revelation, we do not merely know 
what He wills, we know with a new kind of certainty 



TRINITY SUNDAY. 323 

that He isj but the first certainty came before He 
spoke, except in that speech which is inarticulate, un- 
recognized, but real, the speech of nature to nature, of 
the highest and original natiu-e of any sort to the lower 
and derived natures of the same sort, the speech of the 
fountain to the stream, the speech of the father to the 
child. In that speech conies the faith of God into the 
soul of man, and man believes in God. 

3. This, then, is the genesis of faith. Man has be- 
lieved in his own soul and he has believed in God. 
But this is only the genesis, only the birth and the 
beginning. So far all is solitary. Each man has 
known nothing yet of God but what his own personal 
consciousness and experience can tell him. How nat- 
ural the next step is ! Here are these hosts of men 
around him. Here are these generations of men 
stretching back behind him. They too had souls. 
Each in his own individuality, and then together in the 
groups in which they have lived, they have had spirit- 
ual natures and spiritual interests in which they too 
have been related to God and have drawn forth the 
utterances of His spirituality. As soon as we see this, 
then, all the spiritual history of man becomes the sub- 
ject of oui' stud3^ That God whose life and ways we 
have found reflected in our own experiences — which ex- 
periences, w^hen we have once come to know Him, we 
begin to call His treatment of us — behold all the ages, 
all the nations, in proportion to the seriousness of their 
life and the momentousness of their purposes, become 
mirrors of Him, telling us things concerning Him 
which the range and depth of our own personal life 
was too limited to show. All human history is a store- 



324 TRINITY SUNDAY. 

house for our faith. Out of it all comes knowledge 
about God. 

4. And then in the midst of that history of all the 
peoples, each showing us something of God, there 
shines out one peculiar history, the history of a pecu- 
liar people. With greater issues, with prof ounder life, 
the story of the Jews stands out, not, as it sometimes 
seems to be described, as if God had used their national 
life as a mere set of ingenious pictures to tell men 
things which were not real in their day, which were 
not to be real for years and years to come. Not so ! 
The history of the Jews gets its perpetual interest from 
the fact that, being the most conscientious and spirit- 
ual of all peoi)les, the Jews had deeper things to do 
with Grod than other races, and so God showed things 
concerning Himself in His relationship with them that 
He did not show — that He could not show — when He 
was dealing with the Roman or the Greek. There is 
the first and deepest value of the Old Testament, which 
tells theii' history ; there is the fundamental fact which 
makes the belief in that Old Testament a real addition 
to and growth in faith. 

5. But the Old Testament is something more than 
the history of a religious people and of God's relation- 
ship to them. Whoever reads it carefully finds a new 
idea coming in — the idea of direct communication from 
God to man. Through chosen men there are perpetu- 
ally arriving messages from God, telling His people 
directly and distinctly wliat is true and what they 
ought to do. Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah — all the 
way down to Malachi the long line of the prophets 
runs, God speaking to each of them, and through them 



TRINITY SUNDAY. SZ-) 

speaking to His listening people. I will not pause to 
say how natm-ally the expectation of some such power 
of communication from God to man follows upon the 
faith in Grod's existence ; how almost impossible it 
seems to be for men to keep any faith in a wholly silent 
and uncommunicative God. I am not trying now to 
prove the faith, but only to show you how stage by 
stage it grows to its completeness. All that I want 
you to notice, then, about the prophets is what a great 
new life comes into man's belief when their voices 
really break upon his ears. Man has beUeved in his 
own soul. He has believed in God. He has believed 
in a government of God, and learned sometliing of 
what God is by seeing how His government proceeds. 
But everything so far has gone on in awful silence. 
Now God speaks ! '• Thus saith the Lord/' declares 
His prophet. Is it not almost as if the tree had grown 
to its full stature without fohage, all its branches per- 
fect, but all bare, and now at last they all broke forth 
into leafage in one glorious moment f It is not simply 
what the prophets say. Certainly it is not the glimpses 
of yet unborn history which they sometimes give us — 
what in the narrower and stricter sense we often call 
prophecy. It is that in them God has spoken — spoken 
with such a voice that the conscience and the heart of 
man can hear. 

6, If this were all it would be very much indeed •, 
but there is something else. At last I come now to 
the text, which I have not yet mentioned. In the 
chapter of Matthew from which it is taken Some One is 
telling this same story which I have tried to teU — the 
story of the gradually ripening provision for the faith 



326 TRINITY SUNDAY. 

of man. And He has readied this point. He has just 
recounted the story of the Hebrew prophets. A Master 
has sent His servants to the workmen in His vineyard 
to secure their loyalty and service. The mission has 
not done its work : " The husbandmen took His servants, 
and beat one, and killed another, and stoned another. 
Again, He sent other servants more than the first : and 
they did unto them likewise." There is just the point 
that we have reached — the mission of the prophets. 
And then the Speaker goes on and declares another 
new act of the Master of the vineyard : " Last of all 
He sent unto them His Son." Just see what we have 
here. Jesus is talking about Himself. He is telling 
about His own coming into the world. He is declar- 
ing what came before Him and compelled His coming. 
And He declares that with His coming there was a dis- 
tinct change, a clear step forward from one method of 
the revelation of (jrod to man to another method of the 
revelation of God to man. That seems so clear. God 
sent them servant after servant, but by and by He 
stopped the stream of servants and sent unto them 
His Son. Fix your mind clearly and simply on these 
words. Can they mean anything else than this: that 
there was a distinctly new method of communication, 
a distinctively new kind of revelation, when Jesus 
Christ, the Son of God, came, which had not been in the 
coming of Isaiah or of Moses 1 They were servants. 
This was a new being with a new name. This is the 
Son. 

Nor is it hard to discover, with these two names be- 
fore us, what was the nature of the change which the 
coming of Jesus brought about. If you can picture to 



TRINITY SUNDAY. 327 

yourself a father wlio has sent message after message 
to his wilful boy, assuring him of love, and begging, 
tempting, commanding his obedience ; if you can think 
of him at last, when all of them have failed, gathering 
up all the affection and majesty of his fatherhood and 
going himself, that with the look of his own eye and 
the outreach of his own hand he might bear living wit- 
ness of that which no messenger could tell, then you 
can feel the difference which Jesus means to describe. 
If you can pictm-e a king whose armies are insulted 
and despised going himself and putting his own life 
trustfully into the power of his rebellious subjects, that 
he might show them all his heart, again you see the 
difference. It is the everlasting difference between 
selfhood and its power, as distinguished from the clos- 
est and most intimate of messengers. A being's 
knowledge or authority that being may impart to a 
servant, and that servant may communicate. But a 
being's self can be handed over to no hired stranger, 
however lojal and obedient and devoted he may be. 
There is a mystery and depth of power in a man's self 
which is all his own. Now try to state to yourseK 
what was the distinction that Jesus drew between Him- 
self and the prophets who had come before Him, and 
you will find, I am sure, that it lies just here. They 
brought God's messages ; He brought God's self. They 
revealed God's plans; He opened God's heart. They 
told men what God wanted ; He showed men what God 
was. That inner incommunicable soul of selfhood 
which none can manifest but he whose it is — nay, none 
save he who is it — that was what Jesus came to show 
men concerning God, and it was His power and pre- 



328 TRINITY SITNDAY. 

rogative to show that which He declared when He 
said that He was different from all that had come be- 
fore Him ; that while they were the servants He was 
the Son of God. 

If we believe what Jesns said about Himself^ my 
friends, and earnestly desire to receive Him and to 
treat Him according to the nature which He declared 
and claimed for Himself, does it not seem very clear 
that it is as the Son of God, not as the servant of God, 
that He must be received ? Not as another Moses with 
a purer law, not as a new Isaiah with a loftier inspira- 
tion, but as one who in a different way brings us the 
very life and heart and nature of God Himself ; there- 
fore not only with intelligent docility, but with adoring 
love, with loving adoration — so He is to be received. 

This is the real truth of the divinity of Jesus Christ. 
Its value to us, its whole relationship to us, indeed, re- 
sides in this : that it involves in Him a power to bring 
the very being of God close to our being, in a way 
purely His own. If the New Testament, if Christ's 
own words, are fuU of the joyous and confident asser- 
tion of that power, then they are full of the assertion 
of His divinity. That is the way in which you ought 
to question your New Testament to see whether it de- 
clares the divinity of Jesus : not by the hunting out 
of proof-texts and single words of Christ, but by the 
broad survey of His whole mission as He Himself con- 
ceived of it, and then the serious asking of yourseK this 
question : Did He or did He not think of His mission 
as intrinsically different — different in kind — from the 
missions of all the great teachers of the race ? And, if 
so, where was the difference ? Could it have lain any- 



TRINITY SUNDAY. 329 

where else than in the fact that He manifested not 
simply God's truth, but God j that He made the life, 
the heart, the love of God to be present among men, 
in their affections and their homes! And if He had 
wanted to state just this difference in the clearest 
words, could He have put it more clearly than this : 
" God sent to the world servant after servant, etc." ! 

I see that certain teachers, with a partizan alacrity, 
have said that the New Version of the New Testament 
has established Unitarianism and abandoned the divin- 
ity of Jesus because it has changed the English of several 
verses, and notably because it has left out one text 
which every scholar of the least information has known 
for years was not originally part of the book in which 
it stood. The truth of the divinity of Jesus, of the 
distinct difference between Him and every other sav- 
ior, of the supreme manifestation of the life of God in 
Him, does not hang on a few verses. If it did it would 
be weak indeed. If it did we may almost say that it 
would not be worth questioning those verses for. No ; 
that truth shines through aU. Christ's thought about 
Himself. It breaks forth in every description of the 
work He has to do. It burns as the soul of His enthu- 
siasm. It makes the deep solemnity and the awful joy 
that fill His hfe. He gathers it around Him, with the 
most touching reverence for the mystery of His own 
nature, whenever He calls HimseK the Son of God and 
takes up with hands conscious of a new kind of power 
the work which the servants of God had failed to do. 

And now suppose that this divinity of Jesus becomes 
part of a man's faith. Think what that means. Sup- 
pose that in addition to all that a man has believed 



330 TRINITY SUNDAY. 

before — in addition to believing that he has a soul, and 
that there is a God, and that God rules in love, and 
that God has spoken in the messages of the prophets — 
suppose a man really believes that, entering into our 
human life, God has been here upon the earth. What 
shall we say of that behef ; what will it be to him who 
holds it ? WiR it be some great burden which he wiU 
carry about groaning and wishing that he could get rid 
of, haunted by it perpetually, looking back with long- 
ing to the sweet and simple days when no such awful 
intrusion of Divinity had broken the snug compactness 
of his human life? The question answers itself. If 
to believe in God is a glory and delight, the nearer the 
God whom I believe in comes to me, the more glorious 
and delightful grows my hfe. To tread an earth which 
He has trodden, to thiuk thoughts and to feel emotions 
which, just as I think and feel them, in their human 
shapes. He the eternal God has thought and felt — this 
is assuredly a marvelous enrichment of my living. I 
have gone out and up into a new world with this new 
faith — a new world, yet the old world stiU ; the old 
world teeming and bursting with new meanings, radi- 
ant with new light, sacred and beautiful all through 
with the remembered presence of the Son of God. 
Surely no man who has once known what it is to live 
in that world can ever turn his back upon its richness. 
7. Shall we go on! Is there yet something further 
before the possibilities of human faith shall be fulfilled ? 
Indeed there is. All this revelation which has come to 
us has been revelation about God. We have gone on 
and up until we have come to believe in Christ. He is 
the Son of God : in a supreme, peculiar way making 



TRINITY SUNDAY. 331 

God's nature known where every other revealer has 
only been God's servant, bringing men His messages. 
But evidently the revehition cannot stop there. If 
Christ does indeed show God to man, then He mnst 
also show man to himself. The sunbeam reveals to 
the flower not merely the sun, but the flower ; and so 
he who sees God in Christ sees also himself, and learns 
his own capacit}^ as he receives the God whom Christ 
makes known to him. 

Little would be any faith which did not culminate 
and round itself with faith in our own spiritual capa- 
bilities. To lie like a stone and see the stars sweep 
over us across the sky, and have no movement, no re- 
sponse in our own hearts — there is no blessing in that. 
But to find that when Christ shows us God oiu* natures 
recognize the Divinity with love, and strive to repeat in 
themselves the image that the Son of God has shown 
to us — that opens infinite joy and hope. 

Is there any recognition of all that in the New Tes- 
tament? Certainly there is. When Jesus comes and 
says, "I am the Son of God, distinct and separate, so 
holding that name solely by Myself that all His other 
messengers are servants and not sons ; and yet you to 
whom I bring Him in your native power of response to 
Him are all His children, and I can bring Him to you 
only in virtue of this essential belonging to Him which 
is in you as His children " — when Jesus says that, He 
is declaring just this completeness of His work which 
I have been describing. 

And Jesus does say that. He caUs HimseK the Son 
of God and He calls us God's sons. There is no con- 
fusion. His Sonship stands above our sonship always. 



332 TRINITY SUNDAY. 

Not one of us may say, as He says, '' He that hath seen 
Me hath seen the Father." And yet all of us, because 
we are able to see the Father in Him, know ourselves 
truly sharers of His Sonship. 

Not many years after Christ had ascended into 
heaven, the greatest master and scholar of His truth, 
the man who above all others had fathomed its mean- 
ing and wrought it out in his experience — the great 
St. Paul — declared this final fact about what Christ 
had done. " Because we are sons," he wrote, " Grod 
hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, 
whereby we cry. Father." The manifestation of Grod 
in Christ completes itself by the manifestation of Grod 
in us. The dispensation of the Son who descends from 
above is fulfilled in the dispensation of the Spirit who 
occupies our souls and gives us perpetual divine light 
and help, and makes our life part of the life of God. 

Again I say all previous faith would be but worth- 
less to us, however sure and certain it might be, if it 
did not come up at last and complete itself in this. To 
believe in the sun and not in the eye ; to beheve in the 
sweetness of the honey and not in the power of taste 5 
to believe in the Grod over us and around us and not 
in the God within us — that would be a powerless and 
fruitless faith. But to believe in God the Son and God 
the Spirit too, in the divine capacity witliin us answer- 
ing back to Juhe divine offer around us ; to believe in 
ourselves through the divine presence which we are 
capable of receiving and containing — that completes 
the faith of man. He may unfold that faith more and 
more, he may fathom it deeper and deepier and bring 
up richer and richer treasures, but he can add nothing 



TRINITY SUNDAY. 333 

to it. He has sailed around the globe of possible be- 
Hef. He has attained the complete faith by which a 
man is saved. 

And now in one last moment let us look back and 
repeat to ourselves what is contained in this completed 
faith of the full Christian man. Let us see how branch 
after branch has added itself to this growing tree of 
faith before our eyes, until at last the tree is perfect. 
First man believes in his own soul ; he knows that he 
is spiiitual. Then he beheves in Grod ; he knows that 
his spirit is but an echo of the central and eternal 
Spirit which is over all. Then He beheves that God 
rules the world ; all history becomes His work, and one 
especial history stands forth — the history of a sacred 
people — in which Grod's hand is most peculiarty mani- 
fest. Then he believes that God has spoken to man- 
kind ; the voices of the prophets bring messages from 
Him. Then, doing what those prophets failed to do, 
behold, there stands forth One who bears God's nature 
and is God's Son. And in the presence of that life of 
Christ the man's own life opens its possibilities and be- 
comes filled with an ever-present power of Divinity, 
with the helping, inspiring, comforting Spirit of God. 
As if one stood and saw the meager stalk enlarge and 
open its spreading branches and clothe itself with leaves 
and at last complete itself in the glory of its golden 
fruit, so grows this full rich faith before our eyes. It 
is the faith in God and the faith in man, in the fullness 
of God's strength making the completeness of man's 
possibility. We call it the faith of the Trinity ; but I 
have wholly failed in what I have tried to do to- 



334 TRINITY SUNDAY. 

day unless I have made you see that this great faith 
is no one single dogma which men may prove or dis- 
prove by an ingenious argument, but is a great con- 
ception of the universe, and of the Power which rules 
it, and of the place of man within it, into which a man 
can only enter by the experience of life. It is the 
story of the life of Grod and the life of man in fullest 
and openest relation to each other. 

About this faith, the faith of all the Christian cen- 
turies, the faith to which our Church is consecrated, 
the faith to which this day belongs, let me say one or 
two things before I close. 

First, it cannot be a matter of indifference and un- 
concern to any living man whether that faith be true 
or not. Say that you believe it, say that you disbelieve 
it — both of these declarations are intelligible; but to 
say that it is a thing of no consequence, to say that 
you do not care whether it is true or not — that proves 
either that you do not know what it really means, or 
that you are wantonly careless about the things which 
above all others deserve the thought a,nd care of every 
intelligent and earnest man. 

And second, to come back to where this sermon 
started, if a man does believe the doctrine of the Trin- 
ity, he ought to rejoice and glory in his faith as the 
enrichment of his hfe. Not as a burden on his back, 
but as wings on his shoulders, he ought to carry his 
belief. To cease to believe it would be, not welcome 
liberty, but incalculable loss. For a new soul to come 
to believe it is not, as men have often foolishly talked, 
the putting out into a sea all dark with mists and fogs. 
It is the entrance into a luxuriant land where all life 



TRINITY SUNDAY. 335 

lives at its fullest, where nature opens her most lavish 
bounty, and where man has the consummate opportu- 
nity to be and do his best. 

I rejoice with you to w^hom that faith is real. Mea- 
sure this great tree in your own life and see how large 
it has grown there. How much of this complete faith 
of God and man do you believe? That means, How 
fully are you hving? Not how many doctrines do you 
hold, but how much of the life of God have you taken 
in to be your life ? May we to-day rejoice anew in all 
the faith which God has given us ; and may He help us 
by obedient lives to make what He has already given 
us ever more and more deeply ours, that so it may be 
possible for Him to give us riclier and richer faith for- 
ever. 



XXII. 
THE TRANSFIGURATION OF CHRIST. 

." And Peter answered and said to Jesus, Master, it is good for 
us to l3e here : and let us make three tabernacles ; one for Thee, 
and one for Moses, and one for Elias. For he wist not wliat to 
say." — Mark ix. 5, 6. 

In that book which is known as the Second Epistle 
of St. Peter, the appstle, now grown into old age, is 
heard recalling the event of which the story is told in 
this chapter of St. Mark. '^ And this voice which came 
from heaven," he says, " we heard when we were with 
Him in the holy mount." He is remembering the 
Transfiguration. Through all the busy and burdened 
years which have come in between, Peter has never 
ceased to hear that voice which on the mountain had 
declared Jesus to be ''the beloved Son of God." As 
he looked back to the whole scene he must have been 
thankful that his impulsive suggestion, spoken in the 
confusion, when "he wist not what to say," had not 
been accepted by his Lord. The event which he re- 
membered had been so much more to him than if its 
outward form had been made perpetual. It had passed 
into that glorified world of memory, where its spiritual 
meaning and radiance had shone out from it. It had 
become sacred forever with the manifestation of its 
spiritual truth. 

336 



THE TRANSFIGURATION OF CHRIST. 337 

This is the best thing which can happen to the events 
of life : that they should pass into the region of exalted 
memory, where their true light may shine out for the 
illumination of all the life which we have yet to live. 
Less and less, I think, do we desire that the mere con- 
ditions and circumstances of life should be maintained. 
More and more do we dread that the events of the past 
should be lost out of our memory. Richer and richer 
seems to be that illumination in which they are set 
when they are spiritually remembered and we can see 
the fullness of their meaning. It is not always plea- 
sant to see still standing on the street-side the house in 
which you lived when you were a boy. Other people 
have come and lived in it, and their lives, mixed with 
yours, look out upon you from its windows. But your 
boyhood itself — that goes back from you into a realm 
of light and eternity, winning clearness and interpre- 
tation as it goes, and takes its place there, glorified, 
not distorted, revealed, not falsified, pouring out power 
and illumination upon ail your life. As the great men 
of the world walk sometimes with great labor and dis- 
tress along the common streets of life and then pass 
off into a world of undying fame, where they stand 
close and clear forever to the heart and the intelligence 
of man, so the great events of our lives have their 
world of undying influence, whence their power comes 
forth to touch and shape the life which is made up of 
the procession of less illustrious events. 

I want to speak to you to-day of the power of the 
most exalted moments of our lives. The Transfigura- 
tion had been the most splendid moment in the life 
of Peter. Part of his life had been lived in the com- 



338 THE TRANSFIGURATION OF CHRIST. 

monplaee labor of Ms trade as fisherman. Part of it 
had been given to the loving and puzzled study of his 
Master's nature, trying to find out the secret of this 
wonderful power. One ]ong stretch of it had been 
clouded with his mean and wretched sin. Many years 
of it had been given to the patient, faithful labor of 
his missionary life. In the midst of it all there shone 
forth one experience of unmixed and certain glory. 
Out of this confused and undulating land stood up one 
mountain-top which never lost the hght. Once he had 
seen Jesus in apocalyptic glory. Once he had felt the 
very fire which burns in the robes of the everlasting 
purity and power. Once every doubt, every darkness, 
eYery delay, had disappeared, and he had been in 
heaven for an hour. The splendor of that moment 
never faded. The old man died rejoicing in the mem- 
ory that it had once been his, and feeling sure that in 
it was the promise of all the glory to wliich he was 
going. 

To many, if not to all, men's lives come such splen- 
did moments as came to Peter on the mountain of the 
Transfiguration. If I coold uncover the hearts of you 
who are listening to me this morning I think that I 
should find in almost all — ^perhaps in all — of them a 
sacred chamber where burns the bright memory of 
some loftiest moment, some supreme experience, which 
is your transfiguration time. Once on a certain morn- 
ing you felt the glory of living, and the misery of life 
has never since that been able quite to take possession 
of your soul. Once you knew for a few days what was 
the delight of a perfect friendship. Once you saw for 
an inspired instant the idea of your profession blaze 



THE TRANSFIGURATION OF CHRIST. 339 

out of the midst of its dull drudgery. Once, just for 
a glorious moment, you saw the very truth and believed 
in it without the shadow of a cloud. Do not you know 
sojne of these experiences? I am sure you do. And 
often the question must have come, "What do they 
mean ? What value may I give to these transfiguration 
times ? " So much depends upon the answer which we 
give to that question that I may well ask you to study 
it with me awhile. 

And, first of all, the impulse must be right which 
gives to these highest experiences of our lives a pro- 
phetic value. The first instinct is to feel that they are 
not complete and final; that they point to something 
which is yet to come ; that they are the premonitions, 
the anticipations, of a fuller condition, in which that 
which they manifested fitfully and transiently shall 
become the constant and habitual possession of the 
life. 

What a mockery there would be in these supreme 
ecstatic moments of life if they did not meet with this 
instinct and claim their interpretation from it ! Once 
to have been brought up out of the dungeon and 
shown the sunlight and then be carried back again, 
and, with the memory of it still in our eyes, to hear the 
bolt driven and the key thrown into the depths, so 
that we never again could be released one moment 
from our darkness — what wretchedness could equal 
that ! Once to have seen for a moment what it is to 
believe, and then to feel the stone of unbelief rolled 
hopelessly to our tomb door — all the convictions of 
the human soul stand up against a cruel mockery like 
that ! It cannot be ! 



340 THE TRANSFIGURATION OF CHRIST. 

And these convictions of the human soul find mani- 
fold support in what men see on many sides. There 
are abundant instances in which some splendor which 
is by and by to become fijsed and habitual shows itself 
first in a sudden splendid flash of light, which disap- 
pears the moment it has showed itself to the man's 
astonished eyes. When was ever any invention made 
w^hich ultimately was to take its quiet place in the 
midst of the prosperous industry of humankind, but 
first it showed itself as a dream and vanished hke an 
impossibility before the eyes of some amazed, ingenious 
youth, who hopelessly begged that it would stay with 
him, and wist not what he said ? The motive which by 
and by, with its steady pressure, is going to move all 
our life is felt first like a wayward gust out of some 
transcendental, unimaginable world. The friend who 
is to be our life's unfailing solace appears to us first in 
some garment of light, which we can only reverence at 
a distance, and can never dare to touch. It is the 
most familiar testimony of all truly thoughtful men. 
That which is ultimately to become the soul's habitual 
support comes first in some supreme exceptional man- 
ifestation, which, even though it disappears, still leaves 
behind it in man's instincts a memory that is full of 
hope, a deep conviction that it has not gone forever, 
and so a strength to watch and wait and hope for its 
return. 

It seems to me like this : A traveler is going through 
a country by a long straight road which leads at last 
to a great city which is his final goal. At the very be- 
ginning of the journey the road leads over a high hill. 
Up on the summit of that hill the traveler can clearly 



THE TRANSFIGURATION OF CHRIST. 341 

see the spires of the far-away city flashing in the snn. 
He feasts his eyes on it. He fills his eyes with it. 
And then he follows the road down into the valley. 
It loses the sight of the city almost immediately. It 
plunges into forests. It sounds the depths in which 
flow the dark waters which the sun never touches. 
But yet it never forgets the city which it saw from the 
hilltop. It feels that distant unforgotten glory draw- 
ing it toward it in a tight straight line. And when at 
last the traveler enters in and makes that city thence- 
forth his home, it is not strange to him, because of the 
prophecy of it which has been in his heai-t ever since 
he saw it from the hill. 

If we read rightly, thus, the method by which God 
brings His children to their best attainment, it is cer- 
tainly a method full of wisdom and beauty. First He 
lets shine upon them for a moment the thing He wants 
them to become, the greatness or the goodness which 
He wishes them to reach. And then, with that shining 
vision fastened in theii* hearts, He sets them forth on 
the long road to reach it. The vision does not make 
it theirs. The jouimey is still to be made, the battle is 
still to be fought, the task is still to be done. But all 
the time, through the long process, that sight which 
the man saw from the mountain-top is still before 
the eyes, and no darkness can be perfectly discourag- 
ing to him who keeps that memory and prophec}" of 
light. 

A memor}' which is not also a prophecy is terrible. 
Better to forget than to remember only as a thing that 
is past and finished forever. You recall the happy 
days of an old friendship. Unless it is a perpetual 



342 THE TRANSFIGURATION OF CHRIST. 

revelation to you of the perfect friendship of the per- 
fect life it comes to be a torture. 

" 'Tis better to have loved and lost 
Than never to have loved at all ; " 

but the true blessedness is reached only when you know 
that that which you have seen plunged into the fiery 
furnace is to come out again, the same, but finer, purer, 
holier, more worthy of the child of God ! 

When we have really grasped this truth, then how 
interesting and impressive becomes the sight of the life 
of oui* fellow-men ! Many and many of these men 
whom we see plodding on in their dusty ways are 
traveling with visions in their souls. Nobody knows 
it but themselves and God. Once, years ago, they saw 
a light. They knew, if only for a moment, what com- 
panionships, what attainments, they were made for 
That light has never faded. It is the soul of good 
things which they are doing in the world to-day. It 
makes them sure when other men think their faith is 
gone. It wiU be with them till the end, until they 
come to all it prophesies. 

Childhood, coming at the beginning of every life, is 
in the lives of many men this time of vision and of 
prophecy. We live in those first years in which it 
seems easy to do and be great things. We are full of 
the sense of God. We are surrounded by an atmo- 
sphere of faith. And then come doubt and hardship 
and the falseness of men. Tell me, who is there of us 
that could live through it all if we had not been upon 
the mountain -top first and seen and believed? There 
is not the skeptic who once prayed as a little child that 



THE TRANSFIGURATION OF CHRIST. 343 

is not to the end of his skeptical life the better for that 
prayer. There is not the cynic, despising and despair- 
ing of his brethren, who has not at the bottom of his 
heart the seed of a better hope, kept from the days 
when as a boy he trusted them and knew that in every 
one of them was a capacity of goodness. 

If we go a little deeper into the philosophy of this 
power which belongs to the memory of onr best 
moments, if we ask ourselves why it is that G-od has 
appointed such a treatment as I have been trying to 
describe for His children, I think we are not wholly at 
a loss. May it not be that in this way a condition or 
conviction which in the first place took its shape under 
special circumstances may best become an independent 
spiritual possession of the soul, to be used in all the 
various circumstances of the life ? You cast a tool of 
iron in a mold. Then you break the mold and throw 
it away ; but the tool which first took shape in it stays 
in your hand and is yours for a hundred uses. So, 
suppose that years ago there came some crisis in your 
life which taught you the necessity and the glory of 
being brave. It was some mighty day of God Avith 
you. With lightnings and thunderings Grod scattered 
your timid fears and made your whole masculine vigor 
to come forth. You dared to fight because you dared not 
feebly run away. It was a revelation of you to yourself. 
What then ? The crisis past, the lightnings faded and 
the thunders hushed, jou came down from the moun- 
tain. Ever since that you have walked on in quiet, 
level ways. But many a time, in simple tasks which 
had not power of themselves to bring you such self- 
revelations, you have found yourself able to be brave 



344 THE TRANSFIGURATION OF CHRIST, 

with a bravery whose possibility you learned in that 
tremendous hour. If, had your life continued in that 
tumult, you would have come to think that bravery 
belonged to tumult and was only possible in the stress 
of battle, can you not see why God caused the sky of 
your life to clear, and would not let you build youi* 
tabernacle on the mountain? Now you are brave for 
any lot. Your courage, summoned by some petty 
struggle of to-day, does not even recall the first awak- 
ening which came to it in that long-past exalted hour. 
Men are meeting the petty enemies of the household 
and the street to-day with a fortitude and a fearless- 
ness whioh they learned thirty years ago on the bat- 
tle-fields of the Rebellion. Men are bearing little 
disappointments with a patience which was born in 
them while they stood by the death-bed of their best 
beloved and watched the hopes of all their life slowly 
sink under the rising flood. It is good that the power 
which is first born under exacting and peculiar circum- 
stances should then be set free from those circumstances 
altogether and become the general possession of the 
life, available for all its needs. The cloud forms about 
the mountain-peak; but once formed there, it floats 
away and drops its blessing upon many fields. 

Closely resembling this is the way in which the qual- 
ities of great men become the possession of the world. 
Great men are in the world what the most enlightened 
and exalted experiences are in the life of any man. 
They are the mountain-tops on which the influences 
which are afterward to fertilize our whole humanity 
have birth. There stands out some great pattern of 
unselfishness; some martyr-life which totally forgets 



THE TRANSFIGURATION OF CHRIST. 345 

itself and lives in suffering self-sacrifice for fellow-men. 
About that man's life gathers an ntterance, an exhibi- 
tion, of the glory of self-sacrifice — of how it is the true 
life of mankind, of how in it alone man becomes truly 
man. Does all that abide in him, live and die in his 
single personality? Does it disappear forever in the 
withering flames which consume hiin at the stake? 
Does not that fire set it free, cast it forth into the at- 
mosphere of the universal human nature, and make it 
the possession of all mankind? Have not you and I 
the power to live more unselfishly to-day because of 
the unselfishness of the great monumental lives of de- 
votion ? 

What is the power of the cross of Jesus ? Manifold, 
I am sure ; more manifold than you or I, or all the 
sinners who have been saved by it, or all the theologians 
who have devoutly studied it in all the ages, have 
begun to know or tell. But certainly one part of its 
power lay here : it was the loftiest manifestation of 
man's power to give himself for duty and for fellow- 
man that the earth has ever seen. In Jesus our 
humanity went up into the mountain and was transfig- 
ured. It shone mth light there on the cross. Thence- 
forth, into whatever depths of selfishness it might 
descend, it carried the power of that transfiguration 
with it. In its certainty that He who suffered there 
was one with it and really bore its nature, it knew that 
not to be selfish, but to be unselfish, was its true life. 
That is the reason why so wonderfully, through aU the 
years of miserable seK-seeking which have come since, 
souls everywhere have come out under the power of that 
cross and let themselves be crucified for f eUow-men, and 



o-IO THE TRANSFIGURATION OF CHRIST. 

Avliy tlie dream of a world glorious with mutual devo- 
tion has never been lost out of men's hearts. 

Those lives of self-devotion, however humble and 
obscure they seem, have always themselves the same 
power which belongs to the sacrifice of Jesus. They 
too throw light on darker lives. They are lesser hill- 
tops grouped around the great mountain. Such lives 
may we live in any little world where God has set us ! 

The most interesting and suggestive groups in the 
world are always those in which identity and contrast 
are most fitly mingled. A scene of nature gives us 
the best pleasure when it is hke and yet unlike some 
scene which we have seen before; not its mere du- 
plicate, and, on the other hand, not so entirely dif- 
ferent from it as to suggest no comparison. Two men 
call forth our interest when they both are evidently 
human, making us feel the humanity which is common 
to them both, and yet each has his distinct peculiarities 
and personal characteristics. Is not this the principle 
which really is at the heart of our relation to the 
exalted and triumphant moments of our past life? 
What is it that makes a man plodding along through 
regions of prosaic doubt remember always one shining 
day of years ago, when all the clouds of doubt parted 
and swept awa}^, and for the time he thoroughly be- 
lieved ? It is because of the sense of identity and the 
sense of contrast both, which the remembrance of that 
day brings with it. In the midst of all his bewilder- 
ment he feels sure that he is th(? same man who lived 
that glorious, ecstatic day. It is not another man's. 
It is his. And in all the exultant sense of its posses- 
sion he is all the more terriblv aware how far he has 



THE TRANSFIGURATION OF CHRIST. 347 

departed from it now. It fills his present life with 
slianie. These two together blend into the longing 
regard with which he looks back npon it, into the 
eager tenacit}^ with which he treasures it. If there 
were no sense of contrast with the present, that long- 
past daj^ of loftier experience would fade away, and 
the man would live in the mere satisfaction of imme- 
diate delight. If there were no sense of identity the 
degenerate present would seem to be the soul's only 
condition. The happier past would seem to belong to 
some other man, and so no hope would flow out from 
it to the prostrate life, promising it better things. 

Is not this so? Years, j^ears ago, it may be, God 
gave you a day of exalted communion with Himself. 
Perhaps in connection with some particular event of 
suffering or joy, perhaps entirely apart from anything 
which happened, as if God gave it directly out of His 
opened hand, God sent you a longer or a shorter period 
of calm, profound, spiiitual peace and joy. It was full 
of assurance. God seemed very real and ver}^ near to 
you. His truth was not only easy to believe, you hun- 
gered after more of it. You went seeking for more 
that you might know of Him. You did not need to 
seek for Him; you found Him everywhere. Christ 
and His light shone out from everj^thing. As you 
remember those days }' ou have no doubt of their real- 
ity. They are the realest days of aU your life. They 
keep a hold on you which will not let you go. And 
are not these the two hands with which they hold you 
— the identity and the contrast of your present life4 
" I, I, this same I, am the man who once lived near to 
God ;" and " Lo, how far from God, in what a desert of 



348 THE TRANSFIGURATION OF CHRIST. 

worldliness and selfishness, I am living now ! " The 
past, our own best past, holds us with these two hands 
and will not let us go. 

No doubt there is a deeper truth about it all. Fol- 
low out this truth, and it is impossible for us to sto23 
short of that idea of our self which is in the heart of 
God and with which He made us to conform. That is 
what really holds us. It is that from which we cannot 
get away. It is our identity and our contrast with that 
which, mingled together, makes the restlessness, the 
shame, the aspiration of our lives. That "purpose of 
Grod concerning us," underlying our lives all the while, 
breaking forth hke subterranean fire at the thinnest 
spots, taking possession of our consciousness at its 
most exalted points, as the flame pours out from 
Vesuvius — that is what really declares itself in our 
transfiguration times. 

That idea of them makes those times most gracious 
in our history, and perfectly explains the fascination 
for us which they never lose. They are the utterance 
of our highest, truest possibility. They are not bril- 
liant unaccountable exceptions. They are our normal 
life. They are the type of what we always might and 
ought to be. For the exceptionalness of an event is 
not properly measured by its rarity. The exception is 
the departure from the law of life, whether it comes 
rarely or comes often. If the law of a man's life, the 
standard, the ideal of it, is that he shall be true, and 
ninety-nine times to-day he hes and only once he tells 
the truth, those ninety-nine times are realLy ninety-nine 
exceptions. Once, only once, he has been his true self, 
conformed to his law. 



THE TRANSFIGURATION OF CHRIST. 349 

It is really the feeling of this — to put the matter in 
a little different way from that in which we have put 
it before — it is the feeling of this truth that our best 
moments are not departures from ourselves, but are 
really the only moments in which we have truly been 
ourselves, which has made the memory of men's best 
moments hold them with such power. Those moments 
became the rallying-points of all their struggles after 
better life. Every enterprising experience turned to 
them as to a burning light, drank from them as from a 
living fountain. They gave unity to all the scattered 
struggles. This and that effort to resist temptation 
was not a solitar}^ thing, sure, in its solitariness, to fail 
and disappear. They were signs of the nature strug- 
gling for its true destiny, the destinjr which had been 
declared and recognized as its truest in that one su- 
preme experience. 

All tliis must have come to Simon Peter. Between 
the Transfiguration time and the time of his Epistle he 
had lived in the struggle for holiness and usefulness. 
Sometimes he had succeeded. Whenever he had had 
success in any degree, that success must have realized 
itself in the light of his great memory. Whatever he 
did that was true and brave must have most easily 
naturalized itself, so to speak, in virtue of the revela- 
tion which had come to him upon the holy mo ant, that 
not darkness, but light, not evil, but good, not useless- 
ness, but usefulness, is the true and native condition 
for a human soul. 

If aU the. world could know that, what a great 
change would come ! If we could all be sure that our 
best is our most natural — that it is the evil which is 



350 THE TRANSFIGURATION OF CHRIST. 

most unnatural ; if I knew man simply in his intrinsic 
nature, nothing at all of this long dark history of his, 
I think that nothing he conld do wonld be so good as 
to surprise me. It would be his wickedness that would 
seem strange. To keep that feeling about him, in spite 
of this long history of his — that is the triumph of the 
truest faith. 

The best men are the truest men. This patience, 
this courage, this spirituality which makes my friend's 
life or the world's hero's life sublime and glorious, is 
not a departure from humanity, it is a realization of 
humanity. When we look at it we want to say, not, 
" How strange that a man should be this ! " Rather 
we want to say, '' How strange that any man should be 
anything but this ! " 

" Christ is the perfect man," we say. When we say 
that we ought to mean that Christ is the only absolutely 
true man that has ever lived; that all men, just as far 
as they fall short of Christ, fall short of humanity; 
that not that Jesus should be sinless, but that every 
other human being who ever lived should be a sinner, 
is the real moral wonder of the world. 

Here, and here only, can come the real meaning of 
the sinfulness of sin. Let me go about always saying 
to myself, '^ To err is human ! " and what chance is 
there that I, being conscious of and rejoicing in my 
Immanity, should think it terrible to do what I believe 
no man can be human without doing? Somebody 
meets me and says, " Christ ! " '' Ah, yes," I answer ; 
^'but then, you know. He was a peculiar sort of man. 
He was not just man like us ! We cannot think that 
we can be what He was. That would be to degrade 



THE TRANSFIGURATION OF CHRIST. 351 

His divinity and to depreciate His work." So we talk 
with a false show of reverence, when really just the 
opposite is true. Really we disown and misinterpret 
Christ when we refuse to see in Him the true type of 
man, once seeing which no man has any right to be 
satisfied or rest until he comes to be like Him. That 
is the real power of His redemption. 

The best man is the truest man. It is in our best 
moments, not in our worst moments, that we are most 
genuinely ourselves. Oh, believe in your noblest im- 
pulses, in y(mr purest instincts, in your most unworldly 
and spiritual thoughts! It is the moment when the 
idea of your profession flashes on you through its dry 
drudgery — that is the moment when you see your 
occupation the most truly. Believe that, O mercenary 
merchants, O clerks and shop-boys overwhelmed and 
stunned by the clamorous detail of business life ! You 
see man most truly when he seems to you to be made 
for the best things. Believe that, O cynics ! May God 
shoAv it to your blinded e3^es. You see your true self 
when you believe that the best and purest and devout- 
est moment which ever came to you is only the sugges- 
tion of what you were meant to be and might be aK 
the time. Believe that, O children of God ! 

This is the wslj in which a sotd lives forever in the 
light which first began to burn around it when it was 
with Jesus in the holy mount ! 



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